


home with you

by hardboiledmeggs



Series: home with you [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Falling In Love, Fate, Female Friendship, Forbidden Love, Friendship/Love, Gender Roles, Healthy Relationships, I have thoughts about women and power in middle earth, Identity Reveal, Intimacy, Loving Marriage, Non-Sexual Intimacy, POV Multiple, Political Intrigue, Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Romance, do women have rights in middle earth or, not perfectly canon, speculation about the culture and politics of rohan, working through trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24864955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledmeggs/pseuds/hardboiledmeggs
Summary: Unknown to him, Éomer meets Lothíriel in Minas Tirith before the Battle of the Black Gate. Drawn to each other, they must navigate long distances and political maneuverings in post-war Middle Earth in order to find their way home.NOW WITH ADDED EPILOGUE.
Relationships: Amrothos & Lothíriel, Éomer Éadig & Lothíriel, Éomer Éadig & Éowyn, Éomer Éadig/Lothíriel, Éowyn/Faramir (Son of Denethor II)
Series: home with you [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924762
Comments: 79
Kudos: 136





	1. Éomer

Éomer is used to grotesque smells of all kinds and he prides himself on the strength of his stomach. But the stink of burning orcs, the musty odor of his uncle under Saruman’s sway, and the earthy atmosphere of horse barns all pale in comparison to the stomach-turning stench of Minas Tirith’s streets in the wake of the battle on the Pelennor Fields. Sewers lie open, broken by the stones flung over the city’s walls. Corpses soften and wither in the streets, with too few left alive to cart them all away. On the field below the city, smoky pyres darken the sky. 

He seeks out a refuge, some hidden place in the city where he can be alone for a while, away from the smells and sounds of this place and free to rest and smoke his pipe in peace. At last he finds a quiet, unused passageway bordered on one side by a low stone wall on top of which sits a woman. Beyond the wall, a sweeping view of the smoking fields below, and beyond that, the dark mountains of Mordor. It isn’t what he had wanted. He had wanted to be alone. But the thought of wandering the city any longer makes his bones ache. How he longs to just _sit_ for a while.

The woman startles when she sees him, her body jerking like a spooked horse. Then, she frowns. It makes him cringe. Hot sweat prickles the back of his neck. He knows what she thinks of him already. He has already seen how the people of Gondor mistrust his own countrymen. Rohan’s languishing decline under Saruman’s thumb brought them low in the eyes of the world of Men. If the coming battle doesn’t bring the end of days, Éomer hopes the Rohirrim’s show of bravery will raise them up again. Éomer bows his head and bends slightly at the waist, courteous and polite as he can, just to show her that she’s wrong, that he isn’t some crude simpleton too foolish to tell friend from foe. She nods, still wary, and he sits, far enough away to avoid offending her any more, with his back pressed to a cold stone wall.

Up close, he can see that she’s pretty, and it only annoys him further. He’d rather she were ugly; it would be easier to ignore her that way. It’s been too long since he’s lain with a woman, and it’s made him oversensitive, he tells himself, as he pulls out his pipe and tobacco. Across from him, she shifts uncomfortably, and Éomer looks up to see her hands folded awkwardly over her lap, a white clay pipe stem protruding from the grey wool folds of her skirt.

“I did not know the women of Minas Tirith smoked,” he tells her.

The expression on her face - dark eyes, bronzed skin, full mouth - is tight and irritated.

“I am not of Minas Tirith,” she declares without further explanation, pulling out her pipe. She hesitates for a moment, then sets her lips around the end of the long stem and pulls in a breath. After a moment, she exhales, sending away a cloud of white smoke.

Éomer watches her lips purse and relax. He curses, then ignores, the low, warm feeling that blooms in his belly at the sight of her. He forces himself to look to his right, at the far-distant ruins of Osgiliath and the violent orange flames of Mount Doom. In two days, they will march to the Black Gate. Something pulls at his insides - realization and mourning, grief and anger. Whatever this woman might ignite in him by her mere prettiness and proximity, he may just as well be dead by the end of the week, and all his desires and longings gone with him. He thinks of Théodred, whose handsome face lured countless maids to his bed, and who died horribly, lingering for days with gangrenous wounds. 

“I won’t bother you,” he says to her quietly, packing tobacco into his pipe’s bowl. “I only want a place to rest.”

“Perhaps,” she replies, “These are strange times. An army may come in peace one day, and conquer us the next.”

Éomer furrows his brow, struck, for a moment, by the observation. It _would_ be easy enough for his men to take Minas Tirith now, while its people are grateful and wounded, leaderless and perhaps not yet eager to trust their ascendant king. The thought that the people of Gondor might be so suspicious of his own soldiers perplexes him. He shakes his head.

“We are not here to conquer you.”

She shrugs and smokes and says nothing.

Éomer strikes a match against the wall, lowers the flame into the bowl of his pipe and puffs. He exhales a ring of smoke, which floats up, then away, caught and dissolved by a breeze. Silence sits between them. It’s the first moment of peace he’s had in days. But as much as he had longed for this, it suddenly seems unbearable. 

He wonders if he can get a rise out of her. Maybe that will settle his nerves.

“You say you are not of Minas Tirith?” 

She looks at him, then takes a drag from the stem of her pipe. “Yes.”

“I might have known. The ladies of this city hardly look at my countrymen, much less speak to them.”

She smirks, exhaling smoke through the side of her mouth. “They are taught that men of the North are barbarians.”

“I thought as much.” He frowns. “We are _not_.” 

She looks him over, then reaches up to touch the hem of the soft blue veil that covers her hair, tucking a few dark strands under it.

“And what do they teach you about Rohan in _your_ faraway homeland, my lady?”

“You’d rather not know.”

“Hm,” he nods, sure she’s right. “What brings you to this city, then?”

She looks at him squarely, drawing in a deep breath. She’s annoyed, but lively, and that makes something stir in Éomer’s chest, somewhere in the space between his heart and lungs.

“My father thought it would be safer here.”

“Is it?”

“Does any place feel _safe_ , now?”

Éomer shakes his head and puffs at his pipe. “No,” he says plainly, because he knows exactly what she means.

She looks at him skeptically, and straightens her back. He feels her raising some invisible guard between their bodies, as though he’s gotten too close to her and must be repelled.

“You ought to know that whatever your Rohirrim may be up to with the grateful ladies of Gondor tonight, I will not allow you to ravish me.”

Éomer smiles. “No need to worry, my lady, I am not tempted.”

He thinks he detects a hint of dismay in her expression, but she covers it quickly with cool disinterest.

“Very well,” she says primly, “I am glad to hear you are not disappointed.”

“Not in the least.”

She gives him a tight smile.

In the city below them, a cheer rises, muffled by distance and carried by the wind. There is only one who can raise such a cry in Minas Tirith. Éomer knows that Aragorn - or Elessar, as he is to be known - is passing through the city, warmly welcomed by all who see him. 

“You must be happy to greet your new king,” he says conversationally.

Her jaw clenches. “Must I be?”

He shrugs. “It is a happy occasion.”

She glances down at the sun emblazoned on the front of his armor, glinting in the fading light of the late afternoon sun.

“Is it? To have a new king? Is it a _happy occasion_ for you?”

Éomer cringes. His polite smile fades. He remembers finding Théoden’s body amidst the stink and muck of battle and his heart sinks. She is right. 

“For all his faults, I would have followed Théoden King to the ends of the earth. I nearly did.” His shoulders heave under the weight of a sigh. “Were you so devoted to your lord?”

She scoffs. “I would not have followed Lord Denethor to the market square.” When he eyes her curiously, she continues, “But his sons are worthy men.”

_His sons_. Boromir, reduced to a painful memory and a broken horn. Faramir, pierced by arrows and condemned to the Houses of Healing alongside his sister. Éomer shakes his head again to sweep away his own maudlin thoughts.

“I have fought by Aragorn’s side. I will again, soon, at the Black Gate,” he tells her. “He is a worthy man.”

She waves her hand, dismissing the idea.

“There are men in this city who are beloved by our people. But we are asked to follow a stranger because he has the _correct_ blood. Because he holds the _correct_ sword in his hands.”

“Perhaps you do not have faith in kings at all. It has been a while since a king sat on the throne in the Citadel. Have the people of Gondor outgrown the idea?”

The woman before him stills. She eyes him warily. “I am not-- I do not speak treason,” she insists, letting the words fall out with a rush of breath. “As it is, it will all be for naught if he cannot survive another fortnight.”

Éomer nods. “You love your country. And your countrymen.”

She looks away, thinking, biting at her lower lip. He can see that she believes she has spoken too freely to the stranger before her.

“The Heir of Isildur has won battles against fearsome enemies,” she says carefully. “But there are many more battles to come, and not all foes can be seen. If we can survive this war, the people of this land will have many wounds to heal.”

Éomer considers this, puffing at his pipe and turning his attention to the expansive view before them. He has seen a little of what she means - in the soldiers of Gondor, he has seen the hollow-eyed look of soldiers who will carry what they have seen in battle with them for as long as they are able to live. But he has seen the same look in places he would not expect: in the faces of the women, elders and children he has passed in the streets of Minas Tirith. They have seen horrors from inside their city’s walls, and cannot easily recover. He thinks of his own people, people he will soon be charged with leading as king, and his heart aches. He looks at the woman seated next to him, and sees that her dark eyes have grown damp. One of her hands is clenched into a fist in her lap. The sight of her upset makes something strange twist in his gut. He decides to do her the favor of changing the subject.

He clears his throat.

“You have not given me your name.”

She looks at him, blinking.

“Nor will I.”

“No matter.” He leans back against the stone wall behind him, stretching his legs. “I can tell enough about you without it.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “You cannot.”

He grins. “You are a lady of this court. Your bearing is dignified enough, graceful even with a pipe in your hand.” She scowls and smokes spitefully. He goes on, looking her up and down until a flush blooms across her cheeks. “You say you are not of this city. I cannot imagine you tramping up and down the hills of Ithilien. But there’s a whiff of the briny salt sea about you, and so I must guess Dol Amroth. Belfalas, perhaps.”

She shifts, rearranging her skirts and turning her body to face him head-on. 

“Would you like to know what I can tell about _you_?”

Éomer gestures magnanimously. “More than anything.”

She raises her chin, looking down her nose at him. “You’re a man of some rank - a captain or a marshal. Your armor’s well kept enough. A great leader among Men of the North, perhaps.” She pauses, straightening her back. “And I can tell you haven’t combed your hair or washed since you rode in last night.”

He rubs at the stubble on his jaw, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps that is why the ladies of Gondor will not speak to me.”

“A fair guess.”

“I suppose you would like me better if I were cleaner.”

She looks away and tries to laugh but it comes out as a strangled scoff and she clears her throat to cover it.

“Is it so important to be liked?”

“Only sometimes.” She’s strange, he decides. Strange in the way she pulls him in and pushes him away at once. “When the war is done, will you remain in Minas Tirith or will you return to the sea?”

“I never said I was from the sea,” she sniffs.

“And yet I have deduced that you are.”

“What does it matter what I’ll do? The war is not yet won.”

“Perhaps I should like to carry into battle a picture in my head of you basking in the sun on a white sandy beach. I cannot think of better encouragement to defeat our enemy.”

She rolls her eyes. “An obscene picture I shall not paint for you.”

“Suit yourself, my lady.”

She blushes again and nearly smiles. She looks across at him, and Éomer thinks he sees a hint of a light behind her eyes. 

“What will _you_ do, then?” she asks him pointedly, “If the war should end?”

“Nothing so obscene as basking in the sunshine.”

“Hm,” she gives him a superior look. “You should not ask questions you would not willingly answer yourself.”

A smile creeps onto his face. He rubs at his chin to wipe it away.

“Very well.” A muscle in his jaw tightens. He hesitates before answering. “I wish I knew,” he admits at last. “The war has changed my circumstances entirely.”

“Oh?” 

Surely she can see how uneager he is to explain himself, and he knows her imagination will attempt to fill in the truth behind his words. She will picture an orc-destroyed estate, or burned farmlands, a woman in the arms of another man, or any other series of calamities that might befall a soldier’s fortunes during wartime.

“I had hoped to return to a life of peace,” he explains. “And now I am doubtful I shall ever have a moment of peace again.”

“This is peaceful enough,” she offers quietly. “For now, at least.”

She gives him a sympathetic look, bordering a little too closely on pity for Éomer’s taste. He smiles and nods, and they each puff on their pipes in silence.

Then, after a long while:

“When will you ride out?”

“The day after tomorrow, once my men have had a chance to catch their breath.”

She nods and chews at her lower lip. Then, she stands, arranging her skirt and adjusting her veil. She empties the ashes from her pipe bowl and tucks the pipe into a slender, hidden gap between two stones.

Before she leaves, she turns to him a final time.

“Perhaps we shall see each other again,” she says, with her shoulders back and her head high.

“Yes,” Éomer breathes. He knows he should stand, too, that that is what a man ought to do when a lady leaves, but the way she looks at him - direct, but soft - makes him feel immovable. “And if we do not--”

“If we do not?” She blinks; something in her expression falters.

“If we do not,” he continues, “I am happy to have met you, my lady.”

“Yes--” she starts. For a moment, it seems as though she might say something more, but instead her knees bend as she makes a slight curtsy.

As she walks by him, and away from him, the movement of her body sends a wash of sweet-smelling air over him.

Éomer’s eyes close. 

In the city below, another quiet cheer rises.

  
  


***

  
  


The people of Gondor have opened their doors to the soldiers of Rohan, spreading his men out on borrowed beds throughout the city as night falls. Éomer, however, spends a restless night on a too-soft mattress in a bedchamber that wasn’t destroyed by Sauron’s forces. After thoroughly washing himself at the city’s baths and spending an hour beside his sister’s sleeping body in the Houses of Healing, he spends most of his day under the heavy thumb of duty, hearing reports from marshals who now report to him, and plotting with Aragorn and the companions he has brought to the White City. 

As dusk turns the gleaming white walls of the city purple and grey, he walks. He wonders if he’ll find her again. He is certain he’d like to.

Minas Tirith is a quiet city, he finds. As he walks up winding streets, ascending towards the Citadel, most of the houses and shops he passes are dark. A few pubs are still bright and cheery, and their light and music pours out onto the street here and there. Inside a few, he can spot his countrymen, drowning their sorrows, or their fears, in Gondorian wine, wrapping their arms around the waists of -- what had she called them? _The grateful ladies of Gondor._ Éomer smiles to himself, happy to see them enjoy a last flagon, a last woman, before he leads them into the open maw of Mordor.

At last, he arrives at the top of the gloomy city. The Guards of the Citadel open the gates to the Court of the Fountain and Éomer steps in, his feet treading silently on the courtyard’s white marble stones. He had thought to come here for the view - to get one last look at the lay of the land, to gauge the distances his men would cross and see how angrily the fires of Mount Doom were burning tonight. Instead, he sees a funeral procession.

He slides along a shadowy wall, staying out of sight, as he watches pallbearers carry an ornate funeral bier across the courtyard. The body is covered with a heavy velvet drape embroidered with a great horn. _The steward_ , Éomer realizes, and stays hidden in shadows. He thinks of the way the woman he had met earlier had spoken of Denethor, as a leader unfit for following, but tonight he sees a small crowd of what remains of Minas Tirith’s noble families quietly trailing after the bier, lit by torchlight and the yellow moon, on their way to the tombs of the stewards. 

It seems too private to see and Éomer searches for an easy, unnoticeable escape, but then something catches his eye: from the scattered end of the group proceeding to the tomb, a woman steps away and conceals herself in a dark corner not far from him. He knows at once that it’s the woman he met earlier. Slowly, he moves from shadow to shadow toward her, compelled to see her again and sensing something amiss in the way she had separated herself from the crowd.

He’s sure his presence will disturb her, and when he’s finally close enough for her to see him, she looks mortified, wiping her damp cheeks with her palms. He nearly shrinks back, but then she manages a small, hollow smile and he steps closer. He wishes he had a handkerchief to offer her, but his pockets are empty - a symptom of being far from home in a time of war - and he’s relieved to see her pull her own kerchief from a pocket in the folds of her dress.

He bows his head. How silly it feels, to go through the motions of gentility at this moment, when Mount Doom belches fire to the south and her pretty face is streaked with tears. But he senses that protocol is a language fluently spoken by a lady of Gondor, and when she gives him her well-practiced curtsy he can see her shoulders relax a little.

“I’m surprised to see you mourn so for Lord Denethor.” She shakes her head wordlessly, and Éomer frowns. “Then what brings these tears, my lady?”

“A memory of others I have lost.”

A few tears slide down her cheeks. She wipes them away quickly with her hands, then rubs her wet palms on the skirt of her dress. 

“I have been told the pain will lessen with time,” Éomer offers, feeling the full impotence of those words in the face of her grief.

She laughs - a dark, wet sound that belies her skepticism. “And have you found that to be true?”

“Not yet,” he admits quietly.

Her expression softens. She waits a long moment before speaking again, and when she does, he strains to hear her. 

“Who have you lost?”

“My parents, long ago. My uncle. My cousin. And many friends.”

“And your king.”

“And my king.”

Éomer swallows past a thick lump in his throat. Her tears have stopped, and he is determined not to add his to the evening.

She sighs and sags against the wall behind her. “My mother died when I was a child. I don’t remember her at all, just--” she hesitates for a moment. Something guarded passes over her expression; he can see her thinking. “Not much, really.”

Éomer nods. She goes on. 

“The war took my cousin, too. And my uncle, I suppose.” She glances over his shoulder, at Denethor’s funeral procession as it disappears through a corridor across the courtyard. Then she looks up at him, curious and quiet. “How do you bear it?”

“I am not sure that I do.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes, I squeeze my fists like this,” he steps closer to her, holding his fists wrist up, “as hard as I can, and as long as I can think about that, I cannot think of the rest.”

“And that helps you.”

“Mm,” he nods and opens his hands, dotted with purple half-moon marks. “And I am reminded to trim my fingernails.”

She snorts a laugh. Éomer spots a hint of a smile, and he preens in the warm glow of her approval.

“When I was young and missed my mother, I would run as far and as fast as I could along--” she hesitates, then admits, “along the beach near our home.” Éomer raises his eyebrows, but holds himself back from gloating at his correct guess earlier. She continues. “It didn’t matter if my legs or my lungs gave out. However much it hurt, it was never as bad as--”

“Yes,” he says when she stops, and when she looks up at him again, there is something different in her eyes. He feels it like a sudden shift in the ground beneath his feet - that mutual recognition, a jolting realization that they are no longer strangers.

“May I--” She hesitates, looking uncertain. Her eyes look ready to fill with tears again. “May I make a strange request of you?”

The sight of her inner turmoil leaves Éomer feeling gutted. His heart beats faster in desperation to calm her again. “Anything, my lady.”

“Will you hold me? Only for a moment, I--”

She cannot get another word out before Éomer has wrapped his arms around her slight figure. Her body fits against his so well. He swallows past a heavy weight in his throat and hopes she can’t feel how his body is trembling as she curls her arms against his chest.

After a while, she pulls away from him, just a little. Her face is in shadow, he cannot see her, but he feels the brush of her lips against his and, after a moment of shock, he surges back against her. It is immodest and unbecoming of his new station - to be wrapped around a strange woman in the dark. A quick succession of sins follows. As her tongue slides into his mouth, he shrugs off the invisible mantle of _king_ , only recently placed on his shoulders. Without it, he is only a man. His cock fills and presses against her hip. Her fingers weave through his hair, pulling him closer. Éomer’s head is a jumble of obscene thoughts, but he manages to spare a moment to wonder who she is, a woman who is high-born enough to attend the Steward’s funeral, but not skittish enough to avoid giving her kisses and caresses to him.

“Tell me your name.”.

She shakes her head, leaning back and rolling the back of her head against the cold stone wall behind her. “We may see each other tomorrow, as you and your men leave the city, and then never again.”

“I wish we would,” he breathes, tightening his arms around her waist. “See each other again.”

She purses her lips. “I wish neither of us would wish for something that cannot be.”

Her gaze drifts up, to the stars above. She sighs, and the feeling of her moving and breathing next to him is irresistible. Éomer knows that her words should discourage him, that he should leave her and let her be. But he cannot.

“Then let me kiss you again.”

She smiles. Some of the emptiness behind her eyes dissipates. She turns her face toward his.

She lets him kiss her again, lets him run his hands across her hair and back and breasts. In the dark, she clings to him and, when his mouth moves from hers to the gentle slope of her neck, she whispers, “ _Please_.”

When he pulls back to look at her, she looks lost again. 

“What?” he gasps, still desperate to pull her back from the low place he found her in. 

She looks flushed and unsure, as though she isn’t sure what she’s asking for. She hesitates.

“Please. _More_.”

“You shall regret it tomorrow,” he gasps, his body humming.

“Damn tomorrow,” she scoffs, looking at him incredulously before dragging him back to her.

Éomer does his best to control himself, to focus his thoughts on strategy and the horrific battle set to unfold in a matter of hours as he tightens his left arm around her waist and pulls up the hem of her skirt with his right hand. He isn’t sure if this is what she meant by _more_ , but she doesn’t move his hand away, and he presses on. Pushing past layers of skirts, his fingers find her sex. She gasps and he hesitates, but then she clutches his tunic in her fists and pulls him to her, and his hand begins to move. For a long while, in that darkened corner of the Citadel, the world narrows to the slick heat pressed against his fingers, her soft breaths, warm against the side of his face, and the jerking movements of her hips. 

He first struggles to master himself - to service her dispassionately, to give her what she needs and retain some shred of personal dignity - but the sounds she makes, muffled against his shoulder, the way her legs part for him, makes him weak. His body melts against hers. His fingers slide inside her; Éomer knows enough about women to know where to rub and where to push against her with the heel of his palm. She pulls him in closer wildly, practically climbing up him, and presses her face against his throat to stifle a moan. For the first time in too long, he lets himself touch and be touched. Her hands in his hair, against his skin, her mouth on his, is a balm against the hard years of battle that led him to this moment. Gone - for a long while - are thoughts of Wormtongue’s hideous sneers, Théodred on his deathbed, Éowyn lying cold and still on the battlefield. 

When at last she shivers and clenches and spends, Éomer is overwhelmed, breathing hard, struggling to stop himself from rutting against her helplessly. She raises her hand, closing her eyes and letting her fingers drift over his tangled hair.

Éomer wipes his hand on his trousers and kisses her again, this time slow and wet, relishing the lazy, satiated way she winds her arms around his neck and pulls him to her. All he can think of is how completely _wonderful_ it feels to be so close to another person. The long months prior, filled with sleepless nights and so much loss and heartache fall away. But after a moment, she shifts. She reaches for his belt, but Éomer catches her by the wrists. 

“No,” he forces himself to say.

He can feel her fingers tremble; for all her boldness, he can tell she’s inexperienced. A thought slips through his mind: that if the war goes well, she’ll likely be married in the not-too-distant future, to some Gondorian prince who would pale at the thought that his pretty wife had once wrapped her hands around a horse-lord’s cock. A hot feeling blooms in Éomer’s chest, and he knows instantly that it isn’t desire, but jealousy. He should push her away now, but instead he pulls her back against him.

“Why not? One good turn deserves another.” 

Éomer looks down at her; her eyes are dark and glassy, her lips pink and swollen. She’d do anything he asked her to. He shudders and resists the urge to press his hips tighter against hers.

He huffs a laugh and she _smiles_ at him and for a moment, Éomer feels so _light_. She turns her head and presses her cheek against his chest.

“Isn’t it nice,” she asks tentatively, “to feel something different for a little while? I didn’t know...”

“What?” he prompts when she trails off.

“I didn’t know that it would feel like that.” Her voice is quiet, awed. She turns to look up at him again.

“Neither did I,” he tells her, tracing the lines of her neck and jaw with his hand. 

“There’s so much I want to forget,” she tells him earnestly, and he nods his understanding.

“Let’s let it go, then,” he says, brushing his lips against the side of her mouth, “for just a little longer.”

He slides his knee between her legs, pinning her skirts against the wall. She presses her cunt against his thigh, rolling her hips, rutting against him despite the heavy layers of fabric between them. Éomer’s body sings out to press back against her, and at last he does, wrapping his arms around her back and, as gently as he can stand, thrusting his hips against hers. He kisses her open mouth and the velvet-soft skin of her neck. His hands roam to clutch at her hips and trace the outline of her breasts through stiff cloth. Time slows. For the first time since his youth, Éomer feels dreamy and love-drunk, so wrapped up in another person that the world seems to shudder and shrink until there is only enough room in it for two.

At last, she pulls away from him, just a little, and he is left gasping and bereft at the sudden loss.

“Will you die at the Black Gate,” she says, and instead of a question it seems more like wondering out loud, a thought that has been bubbling up inside her despite his caresses, and has now spilled over. Her hands trace the lines of his face.

“I shall try not to.”

“Hm.” She frowns. Her hands drop to his chest.

“Will you pray to the gods of Gondor for my return?”

“I will,” she says, solemnly, and starts to step away from him. Éomer reaches for her wrist, but she twists away, out of his reach.

“I want to come back to you,” he blurts out, feeling that whatever lies between them is unfinished, that if she walks away from him now, never to be seen again, he will never be free of the longing she’s stirred up in him.

She looks away from him. In the moonlight, he can almost see tears balancing on the edges of her eyelashes. He wonders if she’s heard those words from a man before. 

“Do you not have anything else to live for?”

Her voice is quiet, a whisper in the darkness.

“Yes, but--”

“Then you must hold those things in your mind, and let me go.”

“And _you_ will let _me_ go?”

“Yes,” she says, and her voice is stronger, but a heavy tear finally drops from her lashes, skips down her cheek and stains the bodice of her dress.

“Stay,” he says, a final plea.

She wipes her face. “I wish you well, sir,” she says, and turns away from him, walking from the shadows into the moonlight, where he cannot follow without being spotted by the Citadel guards. He watches her go, trying to remind himself that he has only known her a little while and cannot be so attached to her yet. In a few days the horror of battle will erase the memory of her warm body against his. He sighs and sags against the cold wall of the Citadel and hopes.

  
  
  


***

  
  


When Éomer and his men march into Minas Tirith again, a few days behind Aragorn’s troops, it isn’t the same as when they had marched in after battling on the Pelennor Fields. This time, the people of Minas Tirith are not hollow and resigned, but joyful, swarming their horses, hands outstretched and faces smiling. They dismount and let their horses be led to the city’s stables as soldiers and officers accept the city’s enthusiastic cheers.

Éomer has just found a break in the crowd when he sees her, the only person he really knows in this place, walking quickly in his direction, her eyes scanning the yard. _Looking for me_ he realizes, and he walks swiftly towards her until she sees him and then - _then_ \- the smile that she gives him pierces his heart and nearly makes him trip over the cobblestones he crosses to get to her. 

“Well,” he crows, “I have lived. Perhaps now we shall conquer your fair city, as you once predicted.”

She laughs, “You underestimate the people of Gondor, my lord. Today, we are stronger. And stronger still with our king in the Citadel.”

“You have changed your mind about him.”

She shrugs, still smiling. “He has lived, too. I have no choice but to accept him now.”

Éomer laughs. A week earlier, he had not seen her in the crowd that watched them depart for the Black Gate, and the sight of her now easily erases the hard disappointment he had felt then.

“And now that the war is won, will you tell me what you will do?”

“I suppose I will.” She takes a deep breath. “My fortunes have changed since I saw you last.”

“Oh?”

She straightens her back, ready to tell him a fact she clearly takes great pride in.

“I will go to Emyn Arnen to serve in the house of your countrywoman, who is to be the Lady of Ithilien.”

Éomer’s stomach lurches. He searches her face to see if she is teasing him.

“My countrywoman. How can that be?”

“Perhaps I should not have said anything,” the confidence in her expression turns to trepidation. “It has not yet been announced. Captain Faramir, who has lately been made the Prince of Ithilien, has asked the king for permission to marry the Lady Éowyn, and it has been granted.” 

Éomer wonders at how much can happen in such a short time. He looks up, higher into the city where he can barely make out the arching windows of the Houses of Healing, where his sister had fallen into the arms of this _Captain of Gondor_. He pushes the thought away; he will have to deal with it later.

“And you will be a lady of her household?”

“I will. I mean to say-- They are not married yet, but the position has been promised to me, and it is a good one.”

“Is it?”

She shrugs. “The opportunities offered to unmarried women in times like these are not many.”

“You may find her to be a tempestuous mistress. I pray you will learn to hold your own against her.”

“I should not like to be against her at all.”

Éomer laughs outright. “She may give you no choice.”

She frowns, uncomprehending.

“Are you acquainted with Prince Faramir?”

She nods, tight-lipped. “He is well known in this city.”

“Is he one of the _worthy men of Gondor_?” He smirks, echoing her earlier words, but then he realizes the opportunity in his hands and lets his guard slip. If she is the only person he knows in this city, and she does not yet know that he is to be king of Rohan, then her opinion is priceless. “Is he worthy of our White Lady?” 

“Why should you trust my judgment?”

He smiles despite the uneasiness he feels. “I am only a stranger here,” he tells her, “but I have heard what kind of man his father was.”

“Faramir is not like his father,” she says quickly. “Not in the slightest.”

“You aren’t in love with him, are you?”

She laughs. “No. But there are many ladies of Gondor who will be disappointed by his choice.”

“I hope she will prove herself to them. She will be lucky to have you by her side.”

Something over his shoulder catches her eye, and makes her expression turn wary. Éomer turns, and, several yards away, he sees Háma watching them. Éomer is grateful they’ve been able to talk this long without interruption. He asks her to meet him later, and she gives him directions to a hidden, unused courtyard in the upper tiers of the city. He leaves her then, turning himself back to Háma and his official duties as she disappears into the city behind him.

***

At last he makes his way to the Citadel, where he meets his sister, embracing her gingerly and feeling interminably grateful to see her alive again. Then, he meets the man who will take her from him. He does his best to be courteous, though it rankles that Faramir asked permission from his king before asking his bride-to-be’s own brother. Nonetheless, Éomer is weakened by the hope he sees in Éowyn’s eyes, and grants his permission willingly. The way Éowyn grabs his hand and smiles makes him feel sure he has made a good choice. But as he leaves them to make their wedding preparations, he feels split in two; for the first time in his life, Éowyn will not be at Meduseld, but in some far away place. Her safety will be out of his hands. Éomer thinks of their parents and wonders what they would think if they knew what he had done. The thought makes a sick panic rise in his chest, but he remembers - _she_ will be there. Éowyn will be surrounded by strangers, but Éomer will know one of her new minders. He rallies, and makes his way to the courtyard where he knows she waits for him.

***

The late afternoon sun filters into the courtyard, a small green space framed by white marble walls, which was as hidden as she’d told him and nearly impossible to find. But find it Éomer has, and he is rewarded with the sight of her in the shade of a flowering tree, dappled with meandering patterns of shadow and light. She is relaxed as she greets him, reaching out to him. A gentle breeze knocks free a cascade of white petals from the tree above as he walks towards her, and for a wild moment, Éomer cannot tell if he is dreaming or awake.

Her head tilts back and he kisses her and it feels good. It feels _new_. He has wondered what it would feel like to return from battle not to a barrel of mead and an empty cot, but to the arms of a woman who had waited for him. Now, he finds that it feels entirely wonderful. She holds him and kisses him, tugs gently at his hair, scoots onto a stone ledge and parts her legs for him again. She laughs - a clear, musical sound - as he struggles with her skirts, but gasps and clenches and melts when his fingers push inside her. 

“I wanted this again,” she whispers, clinging to his neck and pulling him to stand between her knees as his hand works between them.

“I’m glad I did not die,” he whispers back.

“As am I.”

She kisses him, wet and clumsy, and comes.

After she steadies her breath, she reaches again for his belt.

“Let me.”

This time, he does. He lets her tug aside the long tails of his shirt, untie his pants and wrap her fingers around his cock. Éomer braces himself on the wall behind her with one arm, and winds the other around her waist, pulling her close to him as her hand starts to move. Her legs hook around his and her knees squeeze his hips. Éomer holds her gaze for as long as he can - willing himself to focus on the upcoming foaling season, and Háma’s interminable stories about long-past adventures, and the minute details of every battle he’d ever fought. He lasts that way for a while, but finally he makes the mistake of looking down, letting his gaze fall to the space between their bodies. She holds his cock up, nearly against his belly, swirling her thumb over the slick tip. Her skirts are in a state of disarray, pushed aside enough that he can see the soft brown skin of her thighs. All he can think of is how warm she is and how close; in another moment, he is awash in sweet relief, and in yet another moment, she is scrambling through the fabric of her skirt for her handkerchief and dabbing it at her dress. When he apologizes for the mess, she kisses him again and uses the handkerchief’s dry edges to wipe him clean. 

As he laces his pants, she smiles, sweet and easy, and she seems so different, so much freer than the last time he saw her like this. Éomer can’t help but grin back at her like a fool.

“My father,” she hops down from the ledge and shifts from foot to foot with a nervous, hopeful energy. “He might consider someone like you, if you were interested.”

“If I were interested?”

“If you were.”

“Are _you_?” he says, stepping forward and reaching for her hand. She swings away from him, laughing.

“You should talk to my father,” she says, and turns to walk back towards the open, sun-filled courtyard and through its small gate.

Éomer’s heart glows. _Her father_ , he thinks, and only then does he realize that he still doesn’t know her name.

***

In the hour that it takes him to wash and dress for the evening’s feast, Éomer is distracted nearly to the point of madness. He could marry her. _He could marry her_. She would be his wife, and he her husband. He could return to Meduseld to start his family, rather than muddle through the hard transition to kingship alone. The thought is all-consuming, and his head is buzzing with it as he enters Minas Tirith’s Great Hall. 

Somehow he finds her in the throng immediately, spotting her from across the packed hall. She gives him a quiet smile of recognition, and his heart aches at the way her gaze lingers on him.

He feels a swell of satisfaction that he’ll now learn who she is. When he asks Háma, taking time to point her out in the sea of people before them, he learns that she is Prince Imrahil’s daughter, Lothíriel. The thought that he’d so recently found himself in an intimate embrace with the daughter of a friend, beside whom he’d ridden into battle at the Black Gate, fills him with an unsettling sense of impropriety. Still, the sight of her draws him in. Still, her very presence is irresistible.

He sees her do the same, tugging at the sleeve of the woman next to her and pointing in his direction. Across the room, Éomer watches as Lothíriel hears his name, and then his title. He watches as her face falls and she turns away from him. He senses immediately that something is wrong, but what? The warm hope in his chest dissolves into a tight feeling of panic, and he pushes his way through to her, doing his best to acknowledge the bows and curtsies he encounters as he goes.

At last he is by her side again, almost taking her by surprise. She nods her head in acknowledgement, but her eyes are empty, looking at the crowd rather than him.

“You’ve kept quite a secret, your grace.”

She looks irritated and embarrassed. Éomer winces and sucks in a deep breath. 

“Perhaps if I had acquitted myself in a more kingly fashion, it would not come as such a surprise.”

She shifts uncomfortably and bites at her lower lip, her eyes searching the room as if looking for an escape.

“May I still speak with your father?” he asks, dipping his head so she can hear him over the din. She looks suddenly miserable, as though she’d like the floor below them to open up and swallow her whole.

“My father must never know about any of this,” she tells him seriously.

“But do you not still want--”

Lothíriel silences him with a sharp look. “ _That_ is no longer an option, as you must know.”

“I know no such thing.”

“My father would laugh in your face.”

“He would not,” Éomer insists, but her determination makes him falter. “Would he? Why?”

“Because he knows that it is not my destiny to be someone so grand as the _queen of Rohan_ ,” she says incredulously, as though the idea is the most laughable she can imagine. “My dowry is gone - sunk into warships and new armor and a mountain of debt. Dol Amroth will rise again by the grace of wealthy benefactors, as will Rohan. As will we all. Your queen must be a woman with great riches, not the poor daughter of a prince from a place your people have never once thought of.”

Éomer sputters and crosses his arms across his chest. “How can you know all this?”

“Because I am a woman. We are scarcely taught to read, but we must be experts in matrimony.”

He shakes his head. “What you speak of is not matrimony. It is politics, not love.”

“You have a terrible lot to learn.” She sighs, “A Lord of the Mark might marry for love. A king does not.”

“I cannot believe that.”

“It is not a matter of belief, it is simply true _._ ”

Éomer huffs, frustrated, finally feeling his blood grow hot.

“Perhaps you liked me better when you thought me beneath you,” he spits.

She casts a vicious, wounded look in his direction. “True enough, _your grace_. I grow weary of men who are above my station.”

“You would rather I were a common soldier - a _barbarian_ , as you thought when we first met?”

She scoffs. “I would rather you leave me alone.”

That punches him in the gut, makes him feel brittle and raw, makes his chest feel tight and ache.

_“_ I know what you would rather I do to you.”

She blushes and looks away from him, glancing furtively around the room even though he’s sure he kept his voice too low for anyone else to hear.

“What do you want from me?” 

“Tell me truly. Do I repulse you? It did not seem so before I left for the Black Gate. Nor did it seem so this very afternoon.”

“Truly,” she sighs, “before, we were out of each other’s reach. And now we are even further separated. You will marry the lady your councillors suggest. I will marry whichever lord my father and cousin can agree upon.”

He recalls what she told him once. _Why wish for something that cannot be._ The thought rattles in his head, feeling dissonant and false. He sees her soften before his eyes - her shoulders slump; something dark and quiet passes over her expression. How astonishing it is, to find himself facing a horror she has grown used to: that he - and she - are expected to set aside whatever wants or desires they might have in order to be nothing more than useful tools to their countries. 

“May I write to you?”

Her jaw tightens. 

“Please, sir,” she says quietly, “think of the consequences if it were discovered that a lady of your sister’s household was corresponding with the King of Rohan.”

Éomer feels exposed - surrounded by a crush of people as the hopes he had nurtured crumble apart.

“I do not wish to be separated from you.”

“I will not be your mistress.”

“That isn’t what I want.”

He isn’t sure that’s entirely true, but he knows that he could not dishonor her - and anger her father - in that way.

“What you want. What _do_ you want?”

“I don’t know, I want-- I want us to be friends, then.”

She looks at him, doubtful.

He continues, “You are to look after Éowyn, a former occupation of mine. How can I not befriend my successor?”

“Your successor?”

“I have all sorts of useful advice on the subject of my sister, and many of my own opinions about her behavior to share, too.” She smiles - tight and close-lipped, but a smile nonetheless, and Éomer is immediately heartened by it. He tells her what he knows of Éowyn’s likes and dislikes as they wait to be seated for the feast. Lothíriel seems to listen carefully, and it doesn’t escape his notice that she gradually moves closer to him, until her arm nearly touches his. 

“Since… Since you know so much on the subject of matrimony,” he asks finally as the people around them start to move for their seats, “Have I done right by my sister?”

“Yes, very much so.”

Éomer clears his throat.

“She can be very proud,” he says quietly. “If there is anything she requires, can I trust you to notify me? I do not ask for your correspondence, only your discretion.”

“Why do you trust me so?”

“I am an excellent judge of character.”

“All kings must be.”

“They say there is some danger yet in Ithilien.”

“It will be safe enough for her.”

“And for you?”

He takes a chance, knowing they will be hidden by the press of the remaining crowd, and reaches for her hand. She lets him take it, running her thumb along his fingers. Éomer’s body jerks - he barely stops himself from taking her in his arms despite their surroundings. She lets him go quickly.

“You must go to the head table,” she says quietly. “You are seated by the king.”

“Where will you be?”

“Elsewhere,” she smiles for a final time, and bows her head. “Farewell, your grace.”

She walks away, disappearing into the throng of people making their way to banquet tables set with all manner of delicacies. 

***

He sees Lothíriel again the next day, in the cluster of high-born ladies who fuss over Éowyn’s borrowed dress and flowers as she marries Prince Faramir in the Citadel. After the ceremony, when Éomer feels close to falling apart at the realization that he has given away his sister forever, that he will lose her to marriage rather than death, he manages to find Lothíriel standing alone. He only has time to compliment her on her efforts of the day, on making his sister look like she belongs in a court of Gondor, before he is whisked away by Háma and Gamling, who are now as watchful over him as they once were over his uncle.

Éomer had hoped to see her at least once more in the days that follow, but he does not see her at Aragorn's coronation, nor at the feast that follows, and he cannot find her face in the crowd that wishes his troops well on their way back to Rohan. He gives his goodbyes to Aragorn and his fellowship, and to his sister. The thought of leaving the city without her tears him in two. He remembers then that Lothíriel and Éowyn will also leave soon, and there will be nothing left for him here, either. He mounts his horse and, with his men flanking him, does his best to do as Lothíriel instructed him: to forget the past, and fix his eyes on the future.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Lothíriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those who commented on the last chapter! I'm glad you're enjoying it. 
> 
> It'll be a bit before the next chapter is ready, so in the meantime I hope you also enjoy this extra-long chapter.

Ithilien had endured many miseries and degradations in the course of the war. Occupied by the Haradrim, fought over by the Rangers of Ithilien, its civilian occupants are few, living in well-hidden settlements in the wooded hills surrounding Emyn Arnen. In the months following his rise as the Prince of Ithilien, Faramir is kept busy repairing cities, rekindling long-dead alliances, and building a new, prosperous home for the displaced people of Minas Tirith. 

Éowyn and Lothíriel muddle through the move together, becoming friendly enough with each other after a while, each grateful to have the other to complain to on hard days. After a few months, Faramir decides that they will make a journey to Rohan, to see if he can woo his brother-in-law into a trade compact to buy timber from Ithilien in exchange for Ithilien’s purchase of grain from the Westfold. And so, Éowyn and Lothíriel pack their trunks and join the entourage of Gondorians on their way to Minas Tirith and then on to Edoras.

After a week of hard travel, they arrive. Lothíriel is happy to be on solid ground again, feeling sore and shaken to the very bone after so many hours spent either on horseback or trapped inside a rumbling carriage. Their party is greeted warmly as they walk up the streets of the city towards the Golden Hall. Éowyn is treated like the returning hero she is, and by the time they reach Meduseld - where Lothíriel spots Éomer at the top of the staircase leading to the Hall and her heart pounds - her arms are filled with bouquets of wildflowers. 

Lothíriel is happy to break away from the group at the first opportunity, aiming to put (and keep) as much distance as she can between herself and Éomer. She walks down a maze of busy hallways, looking for her assigned room and cringing at how the mere sight of him earlier had affected her. At last she finds herself utterly lost, but in a good enough place to be lost. She has found an empty outdoor passageway that winds around the back side of the hall and is open to an expansive view of wide open fields bordered snow-capped mountains. She walks up to a carved wooden railing, and has just rested her hands on it when a shuffling to her right startles her. From a doorway, which must lead into the hall itself, Éomer appears, looking as startled as she feels.

“My lady,” he says, closing the door behind him and bowing his head. He looks up at her, and he is astonished, delighted to see her, and his obvious pleasure at finding her here only confirms to Lothíriel _why_ it had been so important to avoid him. He smiles, and he is so handsome, dazzling in exactly the way she remembers, that Lothíriel has to grip the banister next to her to keep from swooning. “I once found you in a secret place of yours,” he laughs, “and now I find you in a secret place of mine.”

Lothíriel tries to laugh. She shrugs and holds up her empty hands. “I have not brought my pipe. I aim to give up the habit.”

“Yes,” he says absently, his eyes fixed on hers. “How do you find Edoras?”

“Very well,” she says quickly, then admits, “I suppose I would like it better if I could find my room.”

It strikes her that he is seeing her after she has been traveling for so long and she shudders to think what she looks like, with her clothes rumpled and her hair undone, free of the veil that fashions in Minas Tirith had compelled her to wear when she saw him last.

“That is easy enough to fix.” He blinks, starting to overcome his initial surprise. “And how are-- How have things been, in Ithilien?

Lothíriel smiles, a little too brightly. “Your sister does well there. Her people adore her. Her husband’s devotion is legendary.” 

“The match was a success.”

“It was.”

“I’m glad to hear it. How do you do? In Ithilien?” 

“My complaints are few.”

“How goes your father’s search for a husband?”

She laughs. “I have not heard from him on the subject. Fortunately there are more pressing concerns in Gondor.”

Lothíriel tells herself that she only imagines relief in Éomer’s expression.

“And you? Have you been recommended a bride?”

He rolls his eyes. “Several. Each worse than the last.”

She pushes away a smile. She won’t let him see her satisfaction that he remains unmarried.

Next to her, Éomer draws in a deep breath. “As it happens, I have hardly looked at a woman since returning from Minas Tirith.”

“Oh?”

“A fine lady caught my eye there, and I can think of none other.”

Lothíriel looks up at him. Her heart races; her palms sweat. A feeling of warmth seeps through her body, pooling in the center of her chest and between her legs. She craves it and hates it at the same time - that pull towards him. It’s as though a rope were fastened to her heart, and with even the slightest tug, Éomer could draw her back to him. She tries to laugh, to pretend as though he were only teasing her and that all that had passed between them was a ridiculous lark. But he stays serious, and her false smile fades quickly.

“You must try your best to forget her.” Her voice is barely a whisper. She squares her shoulders and tries to sound stronger. “I’m sure your councillors know which qualities Rohan requires in a queen.”

“Hm,” he hums a vague agreement. “But they do not know which qualities I require in a wife.”

“Where there is a queen, a wife will follow. You must give a woman a chance to adapt to all your romantic notions.”

“ _Romantic notions_?” He raises his eyebrows at her and she grins and shrugs. “Is that what you will do when the time comes? Become what your husband requires?”

“Is that not what all men expect their wives to do?”

She thinks of her aunt, the Lady Finduilas, who had wilted and died in Minas Tirith but who had been deemed a success nonetheless for giving Gondor’s Steward two loyal sons. Her own mother had faded into obscurity in the same way, having provided the necessary heirs for Dol Amroth. Lothíriel has spent a lifetime adjusting to the idea that her life will be an echo of theirs.

“No, it is not. It is not what _I_ expect, in any case.”

She scoffs. “That is easy enough to say, but when _your_ time comes to take a wife…”

Éomer steps closer to her, running his hands along the bannister until his fingers nearly touch hers, stopping when she is forced to look up at him. Lothíriel feels her heartbeat quicken. He has turned so serious, and he is so close to her, this man who has kissed her and been inside her, this man who held her hand in a crowded room and asked her to be his friend. She longs for the strength to step away and break the awful spell he has her under. He speaks slowly and carefully.

“I want her to be exactly as she is with me, always.”

“Who?” Lothíriel sighs. How warm he is, how good he smells, how deep the color in his eyes. 

“My wife.”

She blinks. It’s the splash of cold water she needs. There are so many things she has proven willing to forget in his presence - in particular, her sense of propriety - but she will not let herself forget that she cannot be his wife. She steps back and straightens up.

“Well, you are an exceptional man in many ways, your grace.”

She tries to sound dry, but the smile he gives her is knowing. He saw it - how much she wanted him just a moment ago, and no amount of bluster can cover it up. Had he been able to tell so much about her in Minas Tirith, too?

“Mm,” he nods his agreement, then looks at her with exaggerated concern. “I am beginning to worry that your knowledge in the realm of matrimony is less than you have claimed.”

“As I am not a married lady myself, I suppose you would be right to be skeptical.”

“Let us put it to a test, then.”

“A test?”

“There is one lady of this court whom my advisers prefer above all others. Meet her at the feast tonight and tell me if the match is a good one.”

She hates the idea immediately, but does her best to smile gamely.

“Very well, your grace.”

“No,” he raises a finger to point at her, “Not like that. I have enough advice from people who call me _your grace_. I once asked you to be my friend, and it is a friend’s counsel I need now.”

Lothíriel hesitates. 

“Very well, sir.”

“Very well, _Éomer_ ,” he prompts, and she rolls her eyes.

“I cannot call you that.”

“You may when we are alone. No one shall tell you not to.”

“It is a name for family.”

“And I would have you use it.”

She raises her eyebrows. He is coming closer to her again and she holds her ground. “Is that an order from a king?”

“No, not from a king. From me.”

She frowns. How he lets his guard down with her. How vulnerable he lets himself be. She can barely fathom it. He is close now, looking at her with so much affection, and Lothíriel longs to either press herself against his chest and let his arms wrap around her, or to find the strength to leave him now and hide in her rooms until she is called back to Ithilien.

“Perhaps the next time we meet I shall be impertinent enough to call you by your name,” she tries to tease even though she feels breathless and overheated despite the chilly autumn air.

“The next time?”

“Or the time after that.”

He smiles at her reluctance. “I am pleased to learn that we shall be meeting so often in the future.” 

“Our party will be here a fortnight.” She gives a slight shrug, trying hard to seem nonchalant.

“Perhaps you might grant me the same permission, to use your given name,” he says quietly, and then, “ _Lothíriel_.”

His face changes when he says her name. His whole body changes. He is soft and open, leaning towards her and looking at her with dark, lovesick eyes. Lothíriel feels a creeping, clutching sense of danger grabbing at her spine and her lungs, her heart, her throat. In another moment, she will have no choice but to give in to him, and to herself, but she is saved by a call echoing down the passageway. Éomer turns away from her to see the captain of his guard - a man Lothíriel recognizes from the Rohirrim’s stay in Minas Tirith. She had seen him by the city’s gate, looking at her so strangely when she greeted Éomer as he and his men returned from the Black Gate. He gives her the same strained, suspicious look now. Lothíriel’s stomach turns. He is right to be wary of her, a foreigner who is pulling at the king’s attention when Éomer has just told her that a wife has been chosen for him already. The captain says something vague but urgent, and Éomer gives her directions to the guest chambers, bows his head again, and turns to follow him down the passageway and away from her.

***

Lothíriel finds that her trunk has been brought to her room - a small chamber with a stone hearth and a comfortable-enough bed - and she changes her dress and braids her hair for the evening’s feast. She visits Éowyn’s room, but finds her gone, and makes sure that her lady’s maid has unpacked her fine dresses correctly. She makes her way through Meduseld and, stopping a few times for directions, finds the kitchens, where she orders a bowl of hot water brought up to Éowyn’s rooms later to soothe her lady’s aching feet after the evening’s dancing. After a few short months in Gondor, Éowyn is still growing accustomed to the pinched style of slippers that Lothíriel has long since accepted as a fact of life.

At last she makes her way to the Golden Hall and finds Éowyn, who happily introduces her to every one of her old friends and acquaintances. The ladies of Rohan she meets are welcoming and curious about their friend’s new life; the lords Lothíriel encounters seem to eye her with the same caution as the captain of Éomer’s guard. It’s unsettling, the way they look at her, and she is grateful when Éowyn hooks her elbow around Lothíriel’s and leads her away, arm-in-arm, towards the set tables. At the head of the hall, Éowyn leaves her at last to take her seat next to Faramir.

From his place on the hall’s dais, Lothíriel sees Éomer give her a significant look when she is seated next to a Lady Hild, a tall, smiling woman with sunset-red hair and pink skin covered by constellations of freckles. _So this is she_ , Lothíriel thinks. _The woman I will always wonder about._ In fact, she wonders about Lady Hild already. What sort of queen will she be? Will Éomer hold her, as he had held Lothíriel? Will he kiss her and say all the things that Lothíriel had found so thrilling, the things that are now firmly wedged in her memory and cannot be exorcised no matter how hard she tries? As the meal is served and consumed around them, Lothíriel bravely muddles through an hour of conversation with Lady Hild, feeling increasingly dull and numb as the evening wears on. For her part, Lady Hild sparkles; she’s clever and warm and friendly and - the highest compliment that Lothíriel can allow herself to give - an interesting woman. By the time their plates are cleared away, Lothíriel feels parched despite all the wine she’s guzzled over dinner - dried up and useless and ready to quietly slink back to Gondor. She is struck by a kind of homesickness, longing for the place where she is not free, but familiar. She stands suddenly, pushing her heavy chair back before an attendant can do it for her. The screech of wood against stone turns heads, and for a brief, horrible moment her gaze connects with Éomer’s from where he is seated on the hall’s dais. Lothíriel thinks she makes the right excuses to Lady Hild before she awkwardly slides between their chairs and makes her way out of the hall. 

Outside, in a chilly corridor open to the night air, she grips a wall to stop her vision from swimming. Her fingers trace along carved wood as she walks quickly away from the hall, away from the uncomfortable scene she’d made. The night air cools her face and feels fresh in her lungs. She pauses, trying to remember the way back to her room.

Then, behind her, she hears quick, heavy footsteps.

“Lothíriel.”

She turns and sees Éomer jogging up to her, reaching out to touch her arm. She tries to turn away from him, but he pulls her to face him and wraps his arms around her without further discussion.

“I don’t want her,” he whispers, sharp and fierce, against her hair. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

She can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, and the sound that comes out of her is a strangled whimper that Éomer quickly swallows, pressing his mouth to hers and bringing his hands to cup her face. Lothíriel gasps his name, at last. He presses her against the wall behind her and she no longer cares who he is, or who she is, or what holds them back from one another. A primal kind of possessiveness ignites and flares in her. _Mine_ , she thinks as her arms wrap around his neck, _mine_ , as he presses his whole body against hers, _mine,_ as he grips her waist and kisses her until she feels on the verge of collapse. But then the echo of footsteps in the corridor sends him flying away from her, running a hand over his hair and straightening his trousers. Not hers. Not really.

Around a corner, Éowyn appears. Her gaze slides between them and Lothíriel holds her breath.

“Where have you been? The dancing will begin soon and you are missed.”

“I am--” Éomer hesitates for a moment too long. Lothíriel taps the back of his boot with her toe. “--on my way.”

“Lothíriel,” Éowyn crosses the space between them to take Lothíriel’s arm. “I hope he has not been giving you trouble. _You had better not be giving her trouble_ ,” she points her finger at Éomer as she passes him. “Come, walk back with me.”

Lothíriel shakes her head. “My head aches, my lady.”

Éowyn turns to sock her fist into Éomer’s shoulder in a gesture Lothíriel recalls well from growing up with three brothers. Éomer makes a show of rubbing his arm and looking offended. “You _have_ bothered her. Her head was fine only a short while ago.”

Éowyn leads him back to the hall, haranguing him as they go about leaving his own guests in the middle of a feast. Lothíriel quietly wanders through the stronghold’s winding passages until she finds Éowyn’s rooms. She helps her lady’s maid build and stoke the fire in Éowyn’s hearth. When the large bowl of steaming water she ordered arrives, Lothíriel adds scented oils to it until the room smells more like lavender and peppermint than woodsmoke.

Éowyn comes in late, and Lothíriel sits with her as she kicks off her slippers and soaks her feet while her maid unbraids and brushes her hair. 

“I hope you will not let my brother seduce you,” Éowyn says, looking at Lothíriel with one raised eyebrow.

“My lady?”

“The way I saw you with him, outside the Hall.” Éowyn rolls her eyes. “He thinks he is very charming.”

“You disagree?”

“Most heartily,” Éowyn pauses for a yawn. “Do you think your brothers are as charming as they suppose themselves to be?”

“No, not hardly.”

“Then you see my point.” Éowyn stretches and leans forward so her maid can unlace her dress. “Lady Hild will do him well, if he lets her. And Rohan - her family is the wealthiest in the Westfold. _Béma_ knows she has been practicing to be a queen since the day she arrived here. She would have married Théodred, if he had lived. And now she shall have to settle for Éomer, poor woman.”

Éowyn is changed into her night shift; Faramir knocks softly on the room’s door and enters. His cheeks and nose are red from drink, and he eyes his wife hungrily. Lothíriel and the maid say their goodbyes, and Lothíriel finds her way back to her room - and is pleased to find a well-built fire roaring in the hearth. 

She has only just changed into her nightgown and pulled down the heavy blankets of her bed when there is a soft knock at her own door. She wraps a robe around her and opens it, and is dumbstruck by the sight of Éomer on her doorstep. Like Faramir, his face is flushed and his eyes are glassy. His shirt is undone at the collar, exposing his throat. She wonders if she should invite him in, but knows immediately that she cannot. The temptation would be too great.

“Will you ride with me tomorrow?” he asks.

She frowns. “I do not wish to take you from your sister.”

“You will not,” he reaches across her threshold to take her hand and for a moment, Lothíriel loses her breath. “Please.”

He glances down and suddenly she is too aware that she isn’t dressed. He seems to realize the same thing; his face grows even redder. Lothíriel finds herself the subject of the same lusty gaze that she had seen Éowyn receive from her husband only a little while ago. 

“All right,” she says, and Éomer nods, bringing her hand up to his mouth, closing his eyes as he kisses her fingers, and the sound that Lothíriel makes is uncontrollable and pathetic. How weak she is for him. How much she wants to pull him into her room now and let him make love to her.

“I will meet you at the stables in the morning,” he tells her. “We will leave early, before--”

He hesitates.

“Before anyone has a chance to stop you riding out with anyone other than Lady Hild.”

“Hush,” he whispers, but he sounds too tired to scold her properly.

He kisses her hand again, and lingers for a moment longer before wishing her goodnight and disappearing back into the torchlit hall.

***

She wakes up before dawn and dresses, making her way to the stables just as the sky is starting to lighten. Éomer smiles when he greets her and introduces her to his horse, Firefoot, an enormous grey stallion. Lothíriel runs her fingers along the braids in the Firefoot’s mane and strokes his muscled shoulder. She is introduced to her own horse, a gentle rust-brown mare with a black mane. As they ride out, two king’s guards follow them, and Lothíriel is alarmed for a moment before Éomer assures her that he cannot leave the city without them. They take a back route that leads them through a side gate in the city’s walls and onto the wide plains of Rohan

Éomer leads them across a well-worn path to a thick copse of birch trees growing around a narrow creek that winds across the landscape. They dismount and, after Éomer pulls a small brown leather bag over his shoulder, leave his king’s guards behind at the edge of the small forest. Lothíriel follows him into the trees, which are only just starting to fade from summer green to a brilliant autumnal yellow. They walk in silence for what seems like a long time, making their way single file on a path that leads deeper and deeper, farther and farther away from their chaperones. At last, the trees and long grassy undergrowth open into a scene that is more lush and vibrant than anything Lothíriel expected to find in Rohan. The creek she had seen from afar now gurgles across wet river rocks only steps from where she stands. The early morning light filters through the canopy above, which is alive with the sound of birdsong.

She reaches down to submerge her hand in the cool running water. 

“Do you miss the sea?”

Lothíriel straightens, caught enjoying herself and suddenly self conscious. She wipes her hand on her skirt. “I do miss the smell of salt air.”

“The crashing of waves?” Éomer offers.

“The sand under my feet,” she counters.

“White seashells, half buried, like little pearls on the beach.” He smiles. “The way the setting sun makes the seafoam turn purple.”

She can’t help smiling, too. “I did not know you had seen my home.”

“Only when I was a boy. My father took me. It was very beautiful.”

“Your home is also very beautiful,” she says. “The sound of the wind blowing across the plains of Rohan is not so different from the roar of the ocean.”

Éomer laughs. “That is too generous, my lady.”

“Rohan is beautiful in its own way, then.”

“In its own way,” he repeats. “Yes.” 

They walk a little further along the creek, and as they go Éomer points out all the landmarks of his youth, each with an accompanying tale. Lothíriel learns about the wide spot in the creek where Théodred had slipped and ruined his new tunic, and the tree in which Éowyn had climbed too high and needed rescuing, and the berry patch the three cousins feasted from every summer. They sit on a fallen log near the thorny bushes as he pulls oat cakes, butter and cheese from his bag. Between that and handfuls of wild, amber-colored berries, it’s the best breakfast Lothíriel can remember having, and she tells him so. She doesn’t divulge that half the pleasure she’s taken in their picnic has come from how close he’s sitting to her and how much he seems to enjoy her stories, too.

At last he repacks his bag, stands and stretches from his fingertips to his toes, seeming ready to move on. He’s striking: tall and straight, with his fine clothes and broad shoulders. A patch of sunlight turns his hair golden. Lothíriel stays seated, unable to keep herself from admiring him.

“How regal you are,” she says, smiling up at him.

He snorts. “If I am, it is entirely by accident.”

“How is it, to be a king?” she asks, leaning forward to set her elbows on her knees.

“To be a king is…” he shrugs and smiles back at her, “pleasing.”

“Pleasing?” The answer takes her by surprise. She arches her eyebrow at him. “I suppose it would be _pleasing_ to be in charge of everyone and everything.”

He looks at her sheepishly, as though he knows he has picked the wrong word but now must press on with it. “Bringing peace and happiness to my people, helping them rebuild - that pleases me.”

For a moment he looks like he might say something else, but silences himself, looking away into the trees.

“How is it,” she starts and stops, gathering the courage to continue, “to be Éomer?”

“Lonely,” he says in a small voice.

“Lonely,” she repeats, her brow furrowing.

He crosses his arms around his torso, his shoulders curving in towards his chest. It has the effect of making his large body look smaller, as though he were trying to curl himself into a ball and disappear.

“I am the last of the House of Eorl to live in Meduseld,” he explains. “My sister is gone. I have no uncles or aunts, no cousins, no grandparents. I have no one here.”

“Except your people.”

“Except my people.” He nods. “Were it not for them--”

There’s something in his face that worries her. She chews at her bottom lip.

“And what is it like to be Lothíriel?”

She winces at the question and covers her dismay with a bright smile. “How do you imagine it?”

“I like to imagine you happy. Free to do as you please, with no burdens to carry.”

“Is that the only way you like to imagine me?” Lothíriel lets her smile turn saucy. She has lived nineteen years and learned that a little flirtation is nearly always effective in distracting a man from her own discomfort.

Éomer’s face grows instantly pink and he looks away, caught and flustered. Lothíriel feels her heart glow. How she loves him, just as he is now - dappled by spots of sunshine filtered through the trees above, with his own heart so open and laid bare for her while she keeps hers so closely guarded.

“Emyn Arnen can also be lonely,” she confesses, reaching her hands up to him. “In truth, I do not like it much.”

Éomer’s brow furrows. He takes her hands and lifts her to her feet. 

“Éowyn has been happy there.” 

Lothíriel laughs caustically, wiping bark from her skirts. “With her _love_ , my lady would be happy anywhere. Faramir could make a muddy ditch their home and she would follow him and be glad.”

For a moment, he seems shocked by her answer and Lothíriel feels a rush of shame.

“I do not mean that she is a fool. Only that what for her is a palace is a cage to me. I have no purpose there but to serve her and, as you know, your sister requires little help.”

“True enough,” he says quietly, still watching her. “Would Meduseld be a palace or a cage?” he asks, but it doesn’t sound like a question. His eyes are dark and serious.

“Meduseld? For whom?”

“For the woman unlucky enough to become my wife.”

She laughs and tries to meet his gaze. “To a woman in love, a palace is not made of wood or stone. It is entirely interior. She carries it with her always.”

“Ah, but you have taught me not to expect the love of a wife. You tell me I must keep an eye on a lady’s fortune, not her heart.”

“You must know that your wife will come to love you, no matter how wealthy she may be.”

“But what shall I do if I cannot love her, no matter her wealth?”

“Your councillors will not choose a bride for you who is not beautiful and good and easy to love.” 

“As with Lady Hild?”

“Yes, I am sure she would be easy to love.” 

The words are knives in her throat.

Éomer’s smile fades a bit, and they walk a while further, meandering back to the place where their horses wait. For a long time he keeps pace next to her, quiet and thinking, then, at a wide patch in the path, he stops abruptly, forcing her to turn to face him.

“My love for you is as you say,” he tells her quietly, and his words feel as though they set her on fire. She tries to master her racing heart and stay still. “A wonderful thing I have carried with me since the moment I first left you at Minas Tirith. But…” he hesitates, “simply carrying it, tending to my own heart - I cannot be sustained by it forever.”

Lothíriel’s heart sinks. Her stomach aches. She is not enough. And then, he speaks again.

“I thought--” he runs the toe of his boot along the rough bark of a tree’s roots that have raised from the ground nearby. “I thought perhaps I would speak to my councillors and your cousin to see if I might ask for your hand.” He looks up at her, barely breathing, then quickly adds, “I have written a letter to send to your father as well.”

For a moment, she cannot speak. 

“My father will refuse you.”

“He may. Or he may not. If I do not ask, I shall never know and the uncertainty will drive me mad.”

Lothíriel frowns. He is so much less discouraged than she, and she wonders if it has something to do with being a man, or being a king, and unused to working within the set confines of the world.

“Lady Hild is a fine woman.”

“She is indeed.”

“She expects you to marry her. Your sister expects you to marry her.”

“And yet I will not.”

Lothíriel scoffs. Her face feels hot. She had thought that she was defiant, rebelling against the things that restrain her in her own quiet ways - smoking her pipe and granting access to her body to a man (this man) who was not her husband. But Éomer’s acts of defiance are far too open, too brazen. She is swamped with anxiety at the thought of her father, of Faramir, receiving such a request. What would they think of her? What would they think of _him?_ Lothíriel longs to stuff Éomer into a box of compliance, the same cell she is imprisoned in, that dictates what a person should and should not dare to expect.

“Why on earth not?” her voice is raised. She’s angry now, angry that he won’t give her up and let her lose hope. “Anyway, what difference does it make who you marry as long as… as long as…”

“As long as?” 

She huffs and hesitates, losing her point in the heat of her frustration, and Éomer’s expression suddenly turns worried. 

“As long as you stop holding on to this false hope that there shall ever be such a union between us.”

“You no longer wish for it.” The pain on his face is a dagger to her heart. “I had thought-- Yesterday, I had thought--” he gapes; she feels him struggling to right himself, “I have misunderstood.”

“You have not,” Lothíriel admits, shocked by her own reaction to his reaction. His distress triggers something in her: that bone-deep longing for him that she has been plagued with for months. Her eyes burn as tears gather. “You understand me perfectly in all ways but one. I cannot hope as you do. I cannot.”

Éomer reaches across the space between them, stepping towards her and cupping her face in one hand, heavy and warm on her jaw and neck; Lothíriel sucks in and holds her breath. 

“I have hope enough for the both of us,” he tells her as he pulls her to him, pressing his mouth to hers.

She is grateful for his sturdy arm around her waist, because she is sure her legs would have given out. Her hands grip his shoulders, and in a cobwebby corner of her mind she still knows she should be ashamed of the way she holds on to him, of the small, desperate noises she makes as he moves his mouth from her lips to her throat, of the obscene things she hopes he will do to her, but for now there is only him and her in this forest, bathed in rosy morning light, with the brook below them splashing quietly. She can smell earth and grass and the scent of musk floating up from her bodice. She opens her eyes and sees bits of pollen catch in the sun and gleam white. It feels otherworldly, to be in such a beautiful place in the arms of a man she has yearned for, and when he lowers himself to sit in a thatch of golden summer grass and pulls her down into his lap she goes so willingly, so easily, that she nearly falls on top of him. She is trembling too hard to find it funny, but he laughs. It’s a deep, rich sound that comes from his chest and is silenced instantly when she reaches between them to cup her hand against the hard bulge between his legs. She doesn’t want him to laugh. She doesn’t want what they’re doing now to feel _light_ or _fun_. She had been free and easy with him once, in the courtyard in Minas Tirith, but then she had learned who he was and learned the exact size and shape of the obstacle between them. The hope she had felt that sunny afternoon has transformed into an infectious seriousness that Éomer immediately picks up on. His hips buck against her hand. She shoves aside her skirts and straddles him, grinding down against him and letting him kiss her until he is glassy-eyed and panting, holding tight to her waist.

Lothriel thinks quickly, wishing she knew enough about the world to ask for what she wants properly. “I want… I want you inside,” she says at last, and Éomer pulls back to look at her, confused.

“To marry me would be improper, but this…?”

“Yes,” she tells him, “But this.”

“Has anyone ever--” he starts and stops, she can see him trying to process her request, “Have _you_ ever?”

She shakes her head.

“Have you?”

“Yes,” he says, and he smiles, but with her hands on his shoulders she can feel how he is shaking. “Are you certain?”

Lothíriel bites at her bottom lip and tries to think beyond the press of his erection between her legs. She takes stock of what she is certain of. She is certain that she loves him. She is certain that she wants him. She is certain that he will be unsuccessful in his endeavors to gain permission to marry her, despite his hopes. She is certain that she is as good as making love to another woman’s husband. She is certain they will not have another moment together like this one. She is certain she will not love another man as she loves Éomer.

“Yes.”

It is all the encouragement he needs. His arm tightens around her while his other hand slips between her thighs. He pulls away from her only to pull off his jacket, tossing it carelessly into the grass, and undo the collar of his shirt. She can see sweat shining in the hollow between his collarbones. Lothíriel pulls the tails of his shirt from his trousers and reaches up, under the fabric, feeling warm skin, thick muscle and a thatch of wiry hair on his chest. Éomer shifts, rising up on to his knees then sitting back on his heels and pulling her back onto his lap. She has only to hold on to him as he works, pulling open his pants and pushing aside her skirts and underclothes. 

“ _My love_ ,” she gasps, burying her burning face against his throat as he slowly lowers her onto his cock. She feels a stretch, and a stinging pain that makes her cling to his shoulders more tightly, and then the insides of her thighs are resting on the tops of his, and they are together. 

Éomer lets loose a shuddering breath, moving against her gently. He looks up at her with reverence and awe in his eyes, and for once she lets him. She doesn’t remind him that his efforts are misguided, that she cannot sit beside him in his Golden Hall, but instead just lets him love her, only for a little while. 

“My love” he repeats her words, with tears now pooling at the corners of his eyes. “My love.”

“What should I--”

“When you are ready--”

“I am. Are you?”

“ _Yes_. Yes. Like this.”

He holds on to her tightly, lifting and lowering her as he moves his hips. It’s so much - to feel him inside her like this, to feel the wet slide of his tongue against hers, to hear how his breath stutters as he struggles to master himself. It’s the closest to ecstasy she’s ever been.

“Please,” he manages, “tell me...anything…”

“Anything?” she pushes a damp lock of hair from his forehead.

“Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” she tells him, and _oh_ how she means it.

“I love you,” he repeats breathlessly and they’re quiet for a long time after that. And what else is there to say? He fucks her and kisses her and loves her, and for a long time in that beautiful wood, Lothíriel is lost to the world. They shudder and cling to each other; she comes and then he does, and afterwards they both find that the sheer _feeling_ of it all has pushed out the tears they had each tried to keep in. They laugh and wipe the wet streaks off of each others’ faces. They kiss again, and Lothíriel knows then that it was a mistake to do this with him. He is still inside her, and the place where their bodies meet is so warm and wet, and all she can think of is how her life stretches out before her now without him in it. She moves to stand but he catches her by the waist and slides his hand into the pocket of her dress to find her handkerchief. He kisses her neck as his hands move between them, wiping them both clean and then tucking the ruined fabric into his own pocket. He lets her go now, and they each rise to rearrange their clothing. They hold each other once more, kiss one last time, and then make their way to where they have left their horses and their escort back to Meduseld.

  
  


***

Lothíriel does not see him the next day, or the next, even at evening meals when she had both dreaded and craved the sight of him and still been disappointed. She tries to reassure herself by imagining him at his desk, buried in papers and henpecked by advisors. When that isn’t enough to settle her jangled nerves, she tries not to imagine him at all. She goes back and forth between her own room and Éowyn’s chambers, though Éowyn is mostly absent; she walks the streets of Edoras, eating local delicacies from the shops she passes; she visits the stables to feed oats to the horse she’d ridden days earlier. She finds that she likes Rohan even without Éomer at her side. The people of Edoras are kind enough to her - or, at least, happy to sell her their wares - even though she is so clearly not one of them and they have been given no reason to trust outsiders in recent years. 

It has been three days since she rode to the forest with Éomer when she is interrupted from a peaceful and dull afternoon embroidering at a table in the Golden Hall, which she has often found empty in the long hours before supper. Faramir walks briskly across the hall to sit across from her, trailed by Éowyn, whose shorter legs work harder to keep up. As they sit with her, Éowyn stares daggers at her husband, and it shocks Lothíriel; it is the first time she’s seen any hint of discord between them since their wedding in Minas Tirith.

“We are leaving sooner than planned,” Faramir announces.

Lothíriel glances to Éowyn, whose expression is unchanged.

“How much sooner?” Lothíriel asks.

“Tomorrow morning.”

Lothíriel balks and turns to Éowyn, who crosses her arms and keeps her eyes on Faramir.

“Éomer King has asked to marry you,” Faramir says, the words rushing out with an exasperated sigh. “Did you know he would?”

Her attention is turned back to her cousin. 

“I knew he might.”

Faramir sighs and looks to Éowyn, who raises her eyebrows at him expectantly.

“This is not Gondor. The common folk and the riders of this land follow their king gladly, but the lords who serve him are restless.” Faramir sighs again and keeps his voice low enough that it won’t echo through the vacant hall. “They are political creatures. He is not the man they expected to become king, and so they test him at every turn. They demand that he earn their trust, and without their loyalty, his reign is undermined and doomed to failure.”

She thinks of her first meeting with Éomer, when she had bristled at the thought of Gondor’s unexpected king. 

“Of course these lords have daughters,” she states plainly, and Faramir lets out a breath and nods his head, relieved that she has said it for him.

“Even if he does not choose Lady Hild, there are others lying in wait. The devastation to these lands has been severe - villages burned, horses killed, crops destroyed, friends and brothers turned against each other. The king is tasked with healing these wounds. If marrying a woman of Rohan will keep peace, then that is the choice he must make.”

“And he has made it? His choice?”

Faramir looks uncertain for a moment. He looks at Éowyn again, and she looks away from him.

“As good as,” Faramir says. “You understand he has very little say in the matter.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Lothíriel forces ice water through her veins. She was born to be one of the straight-backed ladies of Gondor, among whom self-denial is considered a virtue. She will handle the situation with dignity, she decides, without clinging or begging. She has been preparing to let Éomer go for months and now she must follow through.

Éowyn has clearly heard enough; she looks between them a final time, then stands, seeming like she might say something before clamping her mouth shut and walking swiftly out of the hall. Lothíriel begins to pack up her needles, thread and fabric when Faramir reaches across the table to stop her. She shakes off his hands and stands.

“Please, my lord, I must prepare for tomorrow’s journey.”

“I do not wish to offend you, cousin,” he starts, looking weary and embarrassed, “but on one condition, I will ask the king’s councillors to reconsider their decision.”

Lothíriel watches his mouth move, but only faintly registers that he is telling her that he knows that she went riding with Éomer. Her head feels light and dizzy and numb. She wishes she were sitting down again. 

Faramir rises and walks around the table towards her, gently placing his hands on her shoulders. Lothíriel wills herself to concentrate on his words.

“Did you lay with him?” he asks, and she blinks in confusion. Faramir casts a glance over his shoulder to ensure that the door through which Éowyn left moments earlier is still firmly closed. “If he has committed such an act upon your body, as your kinsman and lord, I will insist that he wed you.”

Her face grows hot. She thinks of that morning - just days ago - when she and Éomer had made love to each other in the warm grass, among the trees. It suddenly feels intensely private - a secret that she must entrust herself with. That memory, she realizes, is for her and Éomer alone.

“Your intervention is not needed, my lord.”

“I will not shame you, Lothíriel, nor will I blame you for any transgression,” he implores her. “You forget I have had time to study their bloodline. I can understand how _tireless--_ ”

She steps away from his grasp and holds up a hand to stop him. “The king has not dishonored me.”

Faramir sighs and nods, then looks up at her with an apologetic glint in his eyes. “You know your brothers would have my hide had I let a thing like that happen to you free of consequence.”

A heavy pit grows in her stomach. 

“Yes,” she says, “I suppose they would.”

“This is the right thing,” he tells her quietly. “Stability for Rohan is stability for Gondor. Cool heads and reason are a gift we can give to our people now.”

Lothíriel nods and turns back to packing up her embroidery supplies. A hard lump is growing in her throat, and she is rapidly becoming aware of the fact that she needs to leave as soon as possible to avoid making this scene more pathetic. Faramir is still talking about the importance of logic, and how _surely_ they will be able to find her a suitable husband soon, when the hall’s door is knocked wide open and Éomer enters, followed by his king’s guards. He gives the guards a brusque order to close the doors and post themselves outside before striding towards Faramir and Lothíriel with a purpose.

“Leave us,” Éomer says gruffly, barely looking at his brother-in-law as he passes him on his way to Lothíriel.

Faramir throws up his hands, incredulous and exhausted. “You know I cannot.” Éomer halts and turns, bracing for confrontation; Faramir takes a step backward but raises his finger. _A brave move_ , Lothíriel thinks, in light of the fire she saw in Éomer’s eyes. “She is a subject of Gondor under the protection of the House of Húrin, it is my duty to--”

“So now it is an issue of sovereignty?” Éomer nearly shouts, filling the large chamber with his voice and his indignation.

Lothíriel can only see her cousin’s face, but she senses something electric pass between them. As though this moment were only a continuation of an ongoing disagreement that has played out over the last few days. Faramir hesitates, then presses on coolly, holding his palms up.

“It is an issue of sovereignty for _Rohan_ , your grace. Gondor has no quarrel here. But you know I cannot allow--”

Éomer barks a short laugh and runs his hand across his face. “Did I not undermine the sovereignty of the Mark when I allowed you to marry my sister? When you took her away? Did that not make my house weaker?” Faramir lowers his hands. He glances at Lothíriel and she sees grief in his expression. She sees now that much has passed out of her sight. Éomer presses on, with a pain in his voice that makes Lothíriel’s heart heavy. “Only I did not think of houses then, when you came to me. When you told me that you loved her. Do you not remember? Did I not open my arms to you as a brother? Did I not give Éowyn to you willingly, because of her love for you? Has it never occurred to you that the success of the House of Húrin - your very _future_ \- has come at my expense? Had I married _her_ to one of those damned lords--” He stops himself; Lothíriel can see how tense he is in the tightness of his jaw and the straightness of his shoulders.

For a moment, Faramir looks stunned - silenced by the hearing of something he had hoped would never be spoken aloud. The trade - one sibling’s happiness at the expense of the other’s - lies bared before them.

Éomer continues, so quietly that Lothíriel has to strain to hear him. “Can you not offer me even a small part of what I have given you? I ask only for a moment of privacy.”

Faramir tries to hold his ground, but Éomer is clearly defeated. His shoulders slump, he seems unwashed and uncared-for, so markedly different from the handsome monarch she had ridden with days ago. Faramir looks to Lothíriel, and when she nods her approval, he finally leaves them.

As soon as the door slides shut behind him:

“Do not--” 

“I did tell you.”

“I hoped that…”

“I know.”

“I had not expected such strong opposition.”

“Opposition?”

Lothíriel thinks of what it had been like to live in Gondor under its Steward’s rule. Even as a girl, she had rolled her eyes and roiled with anger at Denethor’s poor judgment. They all had. For the first time, she imagines herself not just as Éomer’s wife, but as queen of Rohan. And, now, she imagines what it would be like to live a life full of opposition, to find herself at the head of a resentful people and a volatile aristocracy.

“Years ago, there was a king in Rohan - my grandfather - who they say was more of Gondor than of Rohan. He lived in Gondor many years before he ascended. His queen was of Gondor. He spoke to his court in Sindarin. Theoden King, his son, knew his mother’s homeland well. As a boy, I always knew him to speak the language of the elves, until his mind was poisoned against Gondor.” He glances up to the throne on the dais at the end of the hall, and for a brief moment seems somewhere else entirely. “The lords of this land wish for something new. They wish to see Rohan free from Gondor, to see our gods honored and our language spoken and our bloodlines restored.”

He speaks the last words as though they are acid on his tongue.

She does not know what to say. She says nothing. 

“They may wish themselves into the grave for all I care,” he says, low and angry. And then, with great feeling, “You must do what you will, what your father and lord ask of you, but I swear now that I will marry none but you.”

“Rohan will need a queen. Your people--”

“I have already sacrificed for my people. What I have given Rohan is beyond reckoning. But I cannot - _will not_ \- sacrifice my true heart.”

She steps closer to him, taking both his hands in hers. _Cool heads and reason_.

“You must marry and give Rohan an heir,” she says quietly, looking up at him. “It is what your people need from you.”

He searches her face.

“I know.”

“Lady Hild will be a fine choice.”

“I love you.”

“You love your people,” she squeezes his hands gently and lets go. “And you must do what is best for them.”

He nods. There is still heartbreak in his eyes, but he seems chastened now. 

“You knew more than I gave you credit for.”

Lothíriel tries to smile. “We all must learn in our own way.”

“You will leave tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she picks up her embroidery bag. “I have much to do.”

She curtseys and leaves before he can stop her. She tries to be pleased with the fact that she makes it all the way through Meduseld’s winding, crowded halls and into the privacy of her room before collapsing into a heap on the hard stone floor. She doesn't let herself cry, just clenches her skirts in her hands and breathes hard until she masters herself, overcome at last by a cottony, numbing wave of acceptance.

  
  


***

By the time night falls, her trunks are packed. Éomer is again absent from the Golden Hall at their evening meal, and by the time Lothíriel returns to her room, washes her face and dresses for bed, she feels exhausted and, more than anything, unbearably eager to return to the only place she can rightly call home. She starts her own fire in the hearth to warm up the chilly room and spends a long time staring at the flames and wondering what she will do next. 

Then, there’s a muffled tap at her door and she discovers Éomer on her doorstep again. She steps aside to let him in and closes the door behind him. She lets him take her face in his hands and kiss her cheeks and her mouth and rest his forehead against hers. She lets herself hold on to him one last time. She lets him lead her to her bed, not to make love this time because they both feel too worn out and grief-stricken for it, but to lay next to her. She slides under the bedcovers as he strips to his cream-colored linen shirt and dark trousers and joins her. They wrap themselves around each other - his arm around her waist, her hand on his chest, his leg caught between her knees, her head tucked under his chin. 

Éomer strokes her hair and Lothíriel closes her eyes. _So this is how it would have been_ , she thinks, and falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

In the morning, Éomer’s captain - the one who has had nothing but stern looks for her - is the one who wakes them. He is less serious now, though. She watches as he gently prods his king until finally Éomer stirs and gives him a resigned look. 

“I knew you’d find me somehow, Háma,” he says, rubbing his eyes. 

Háma politely turns his back as Éomer lingers, tracing Lothíriel’s jaw and neck, as though he were committing every line of her face to memory, then he sits up to start pulling on his boots. Behind him, Lothíriel sits up, too, pulling the blankets up around her even though she is still wearing her shift. Finished lacing his boots, Éomer turns to kiss her. He’s more chaste than she would have expected under the circumstances, but she imagines that he doesn’t want to make too much of a scene with Háma in the room.

He whispers his goodbye to her, then turns away from her sharply, following Háma out of the room without looking behind him once.

  
  


***

  
  


With her belongings carefully packed away, Lothíriel plans to hide in Lady Éowyn’s carriage with her lady’s maid, Éowyn herself most often opting to ride horseback on long journeys. But just before they depart, Éowyn shoos the other woman away and takes the seat in the carriage across from Lothíriel.

“Who is my brother to you?” she demands immediately, then throws her hands up in desperation, “When did this all happen?”

Lothíriel chooses to answer the easier of the two questions. “In Minas Tirith,” she says quietly, “Before the Battle of the Black Gate.”

Éowyn gapes incredulously. “That was ages ago! You said nothing!”

The carriage rumbles away, bouncing over the grassy earth.

“I thought it was over.”

“And?”

“It isn’t. It _wasn’t_.” Lothíriel corrects herself quickly, but Éowyn hears her slip and falls back against her seat throwing up her hands again and letting them fall in her lap. “I am certain it is now, though.”

“You-- How can you--” Éowyn rubs her hands across her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “As long as you love him, he will not give up. And you do, don’t you?”

“I--” Lothíriel winces, racking her brain for the least offensive and most honest answer.

“And you are...what, now? If he cannot hope to marry you?”

Lothíriel looks at her hands, folded in her lap, and says nothing.

“His mistress?” Éowyn prompts, and Lothíriel looks up, with a defense already prepared for this accusation.

“As I told Prince Faramir, the king has not dishonored me,” she insists.

But Éowyn waves her hand dismissively.

“He told me.”

“What?”

“ _Éomer told me,_ ” Éowyn says significantly. 

Lothíriel’s cheeks burn; her chest tightens. She isn’t sure whether she should feel betrayed by Éomer or if she should trust his faith in his sister.

Éowyn leans forward, her elbows on her knees. She frowns.

“You lied to Faramir.”

“To do otherwise would have been worse.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she says with certainty.

Éowyn shakes her head.

“If you had told him the truth, you would be married in a fortnight.”

“And all of Rohan would know exactly why.”

For the first time, Lothíriel feels a tinge of shame - a dark, creeping, choking feeling that builds at the base of her throat. She thinks of all the slurs she could be branded with now.

Éowyn seems to accept this answer, then digs through her dress’ pockets to pull out a small green glass bottle with a cork stopper.

“Drink this,” she says, handing it to Lothíriel, who takes it and turns it over in her hand.

“What is it?”

“A gift from the kitchens of Rohan, and terribly hard to come by. I nearly didn’t get it at all.” 

“I don’t--”

“It will ensure that you will not be mother to the king’s bastard.”

“Ah, of course,” Lothíriel says blandly, pulling out the cork and swallowing the sickly-sweet syrup in one go. She had known that such potions were routine in Minas Tirith, though she had never had a reason to take one until now.

“What an utter mess.” Éowyn looks out the carriage window at the vast sweep of grasslands and mountains beyond. 

“Is Faramir’s trade compact ruined?” Lothíriel asks, not sure she wants to know the answer. 

“No,” Éowyn sniffs, “my brother is not so small-minded as that. Rohan will trade.”

Lothíriel breathes out a sigh of relief. The thought had come to her suddenly, and filled her with guilt. She curses her own selfishness - threatening the Westfold’s play to seat their Lady Hild on the throne when a shipment of grain from the same region could mean life or death for the people of Ithilien. Faramir was right. _Cool heads and reason_.

They sit in silence for a long while, until Lothíriel finally regains her courage enough to say, “I should leave Ithilien, my lady. My brother represents Dol Amroth on the king’s trade council. I’m sure there is a place for me at the Citadel.”

“No, no,” Éowyn says, waving her hands. Her brow furrows. “You ought to stay with me. I can teach you Rohirric, geography, local customs, that sort of thing. Then, we might go back to Edoras and try again--”

“My lady,” Lothíriel interrupts, finally galled enough by the situation to feel true frustration. “I wish to return to my people. The people of Gondor. I do not wish to be a queen in Rohan. Rohan is not my home.”

_It isn’t_ , she tells herself, but she can still remember how warm Éomer’s arms were around her, and all the things he had told her in that shady birch-tree forest. She clears her throat. 

“I did not wish to be the lady of anything, and still I find that I am,” Éowyn says, her expression softening. 

“Then,” says Lothíriel, filling the silence, “I am certain you will understand.”

“Hm,” Éowyn narrows her eyes. “We shall leave you at Minas Tirith, then, and arrange to have your things brought there.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Éowyn pounds on the roof of the carriage and they roll to a stop. She leaves the carriage without another word and mounts her horse. As the carriage begins to jostle along the road again, Lothíriel leans her temple against the carriage door, closes her eyes and tries to sleep. When she wakes, she will be closer to home.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are very appreciated!


	3. Éomer & Éowyn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and for hanging on while this chapter took a little while to finish - and ended up shorter than the others. Just getting characters in position so I can get this story where we all know it's going :)
> 
> Also, thank you all for enduring the POV switch that happens in this chapter, because there's more of that coming in the next chapter. I did have to make a slight change to the last paragraph in the first chapter because I messed up my timeline, so that happened, too. 
> 
> As always, comments are very appreciated and definitely help me stay motivated to finish this thing!

_**Éomer** _

Months pass before he sees her again, and the time weighs heavy on his shoulders. Éomer does what he can to drown himself with work - economic relief is provided to farmers, soldiers collect pensions, support is given to war widows and their children. Autumn fades into winter, winter melts into spring, and Éomer consoles himself with the fact that he sees his country - and his countrymen - healing from the long, dark era of Saruman’s occupation. 

And then, as expected, he receives an invitation to Minas Tirith, to witness the coronation of Aragorn’s queen, the lady Arwen. It’s hard to pretend that welcoming Gondor’s queen feels like a happy occasion while he has been unable to secure his own wife, despite regular arguments with his councillors on the subject. He assembles an entourage, with his most prominent captain, Háma, and, unavoidably, Erkenbrand, the Marshal of the West-Mark who through the past two seasons had been Lady Hild’s greatest advocate, pushing hard against Éomer’s objections.

Their party arrives at Minas Tirith on a bright, warm spring day. Éomer finds the city entirely changed since his last visit. The streets are clean and tidy, the people are cheerful and welcoming. And yet, it all does nothing to improve Éomer’s dark mood. Háma and Erkenbrand hover over him as they make their way to the Citadel. Éomer tries to keep alive a glimmer of hope that he might see Lothíriel again. He holds the idea close to his heart, saying nothing to his traveling companions, even Háma, who had seen them together and can guess better than any of his confidantes how much he misses her.

They enter the Great Hall in the Citadel together, to much acclaim, and a warm greeting from Aragorn, who Éomer cannot get used to calling Elessar. For half an hour, Éomer accepts the grateful words of the lords of Gondor who give him too much credit for saving their lands. After a while, the conversations bore even Háma and Erkenbrand, who disappear from his side.

Near the dais at the back of the hall, he sees her, at last. Lothíriel stands behind the soon-to-be-queen, wearing the same type of shimmering, low-necked gown as her sovereign, a marked change from the plain dresses she’d worn when he’d seen her in Edoras, and even further from the dark, conservative clothing the ladies in Gondor had worn during the war. Gleaming drops of silver shine in her black hair, perfectly suspended by a delicate circlet; a lariat of pearls wraps around her neck, glowing white against her skin. Éomer’s mouth waters just at the sight of her. His love for her - his desire for her - is like waves lapping against a beach. In one moment, sucked back and distant, something he can easily turn his back to. But now, as he stands yards away from her in this great hall, the sight of her stirs his feelings, like water pooling and swirling around his feet. The queen says something to the ladies surrounding her, and Éomer hears Lothíriel’s laugh above the others’, rising up in the high-ceilinged room, and he wades in deeper, pulled toward her in the same way that the ocean pulls the tide out, calling it home. He walks across the hall towards her in a daze, seeing nothing but her, when a familiar face cuts into his line of vision, cuts him off from her, and Éomer is forced to stop.

“My old friend,” Imrahil greets him warmly, slapping him on the shoulder good-naturedly. They exchange pleasantries and Imrahil turns to three men who stand at his side - his three sons, standing before Éomer like a wall, each wearing fine clothes emblazoned with the swan of Dol Amroth. 

The youngest - Amrothos - gives him a look that is both appraising and accusatory. It’s a look that Éomer immediately recognizes as one he once wore himself - it is the expression of a brother looking at the man who has deflowered his sister. _So_ , Éomer thinks, _this is the brother she has told._

When Imrahil and his eldest sons have said enough about the auspicious weather and the good fortune of the new King of Gondor to have secured such a lovely queen, they say their goodbyes and leave Éomer, who tries to hide his dismay when Amrothos lingers behind. The younger man’s feet are planted firmly on the floor, his hands clasped behind his back. Across the hall, Lothíriel laughs again and Éomer’s gaze is instinctively pulled to her, then whipped back to her brother, standing like a stone in front of him.

“She has found a new home in the House of Isildur,” Amrothos tells him. His back is straight and his jaw set. Éomer wonders at how like Lothíriel he is, stiff and formal but with a fire inside.

“Yes, I see.”

Éomer shuffles, looking at the floor for a moment, before drawing himself up again, trying to remember that he must act in accordance with his rank here, that his own marshals and captains are also circulating through the hall and he must not let them see him cowed by a young lord of Dol Amroth.

“They say she is the queen’s new favorite.”

“The queen is a lady of good taste.”

“She has the queen’s ear,” Amrothos says significantly. “In time she will be a powerful woman in Minas Tirith and you will be sorry to have crossed her.”

Éomer’s body’s reaction is immediate. His blood curdles in his veins; his cheeks grow hot; his stomach lurches and drops. Amrothos is still fired up; Éomer can only guess how long he has been waiting for this confrontation.

“I have not crossed her.”

“Liar.”

“I am not,” Éomer says darkly.

“Is that so?” Amrothos hisses, lowering his voice as a group of men and women pass them. “And what would you call a man who swears he will marry a maid, takes - _I know_ \- every advantage of her trusting nature--”

“I have _not_ \--” Éomer tries to interject, but Amrothos plows forward.

“--only to break whatever sorry vow you may have given her and let her leave Edoras sure that you will find another bride.”

“ _I will not_ ,” Éomer tries to whisper, but his voice raises enough to turn heads and he tries to cool his expression and relax his shoulders. Amrothos looks at him for a moment, but Éomer’s mind is suddenly blank. It strikes him like a blow: every word Amrothos says might have come from Lothíriel herself, and the thought of that stuns him into silence.

Amrothos looks away sharply, then turns back.

“You have ruined her.”

“No.”

“You have _fucked_ her,” Amrothos says, so quietly Éomer nearly doesn’t hear him. “As though she were some common whore and not a Lady of Gondor.”

Amrothos’ face turns pink. His eyes - dark, like his sister’s - grow damp. Éomer feels his heart rend itself at the sight of a brother’s anguish at his sister’s pain. _Pain I have caused_ , he reminds himself. He looks across the hall towards Lothíriel, and blinks in surprise when he sees her looking back at him. Her face is an unreadable mask. Her gaze flickers to her brother, then back to her queen.

“Yes, she told me,” Amrothos continues beside him. “She tells me everything. You cannot imagine the pain it has brought me. You cannot imagine the pain _you_ have brought _her.”_

“I--”

“What if it were your sister?” Amrothos says, plain and quiet now. “What then? Would you not stand where I am now?”

“I would,” Éomer says, chastened and fiercely wishing that he could live in a world where this conversation had never happened. “But I am not yet married, and will marry none but Lothíriel. I have sworn it to her and I swear it to you.”

Amrothos’ chest stays puffed, but his glare softens slightly. Éomer presses on.

“She is ever in my thoughts. I raise the issue with my council often, though I make little progress.”

“What are their objections?”

Éomer looks down and shakes his head. He won’t repeat the things his councillors have told him. The way they speak about outsiders is not what he remembers from the Rohan of his youth, before Grima and Saruman conspired to bring them all to ruin.

“What can we do?”

“I wish I knew,” Éomer confesses, and an instant later Erkenbrand is at his side, startling them both. 

Erkenbrand manages to lead him away, determined to introduce him to a cluster of lords and princes from Gondor’s southern coast, each of them eager to persuade him that Rohan ought to purchase their cod, or lobster, or salt. Éomer endures a long hour, commits to as little as he can, and finally escapes, so hastily that even Erkenbrand can’t follow him. 

As he makes his way through empty hallways to his rooms, he pulls off his jacket and combs his hand through his hair. He feels low, sagging, pulled down, tired of working with no respite. Amrothos’ words ring in his ears. The memory of the strange, distant way Lothíriel looked at him turns his stomach. By the time he reaches his door, nodding at his king’s guards stationed on either side, his fine coat is nearly dragging on the ground; he longs to lie down and see no one for as long as possible. 

But then, just as he places his hand on the door’s handle, he hears laughter coming from the sitting room just inside. As he pushes open the heavy wooden door, he sees Háma, sitting on a high-backed chair in the chamber’s sitting area, and on the brocade sofa next to him, there is Lothíriel. They both stand, bowing and curtseying as he enters. Éomer nods his head, hardly able to take his eyes off her. Early afternoon light streams in through the room’s large windows, lighting Lothíriel up in bright sunshine. Éomer tries to look casual, tries not to let on how the very sight of her is a fist clenched around his heart.

Háma makes his goodbyes to each of them, giving Lothíriel a friendly smile, and Éomer is surprised to see that some warmth has sprouted between them. Háma is the first of his countrymen to to show her any sign of kindness, to do anything other than push her away from him. Éomer commits it to memory; he will reward him for it later. Behind him, he hears the soft click as the door slides shut behind Háma.

“I am sorry to surprise you like this,” Lothíriel says, smiling a little.

“Not at all,” he mutters, gesturing that she should sit again, and she does.

  
“You’re settling in well?” she asks as she fusses over her dress, spreading her skirt just so over the sofa.

“Yes,” he tells her, pouring himself a too-early glass of wine from a glass decanter on a side table. “I just had the most interesting conversation with your brother.”

“Oh,” she frowns. “I hope you will not take whatever he has told you to heart.”

“I did, actually,” Éomer says, still feeling chagrined, “and I should.”

He gestures at the empty glasses next to him, but she shakes her head.

He joins her, sitting in Háma’s emptied seat and drinking half of his wine in one gulp. At last, Lothíriel clears her throat.

“I wanted to talk with you about something in particular,” she says quietly. She looks concerned, and Éomer tries to sit up straighter, tries to look a little stronger and fitter, though he knows she’s close enough to see the dark circles under his eyes. “Perhaps another time would be better.”

“No,” he reaches to take her hand. “Please stay”

She takes a deep breath and he lets go of her, pressing his palm to the top of his thigh to stop himself from holding on to her like that again.

“I have lately been in the service of Lady Arwen.”

“Yes, I know.”

“She is an unusual woman. Well, not a woman exactly. At least not--” she fidgets and looks around the room, “I mean to say, there are things she knows, things no ordinary woman could ever know, but she knows them. She has seen them.”

“What things?”

“Things that have not yet come to pass.”

“Such as?”

Lothíriel shifts in her seat. 

“During the war, she was meant to travel to Valinor, but on the road she had a vision of a son, _her_ son, the son she will have with Elessar who will rule this land after him.”

“That is unusual,” he concedes.

“And so she returned to Minas Tirith to meet him here and so they are married and so she is to be queen.”

“And the child?”

“She carries him already. You must tell no one, it is not yet a well known thing.”

“A strange message to bring me in this fashion.”

“She has seen something else. Another king.”

“Another King of Gondor?”

“No, of Rohan.”

“She has seen a future King of Rohan?”

“Yes.”

“My son?”

“Yes,” she clears her throat again, looking anywhere but at Éomer. “She sees them ruling together, in friendship, bringing a new era of peace and prosperity to both lands.”

“This is good news.” She nods and shrugs noncommittally. There is something she is not telling him. “Perhaps there is more to this story?”

“Her grace tells me that the child is also mine. Of course, I have told her that that cannot be, but she insists she is not mistaken.”

Éomer shakes his head. “I do not understand--” he starts, but then she looks at him and something in his mind slides and clicks into place. He understands her, and in that moment his heart, filled with longing he has tried so hard, for her sake, to push away, flares to life again. A moment earlier he had been worn out and discouraged but now he is sleek, filled with love. He leans forward with one elbow on his knee. “Our child,” he whispers, and she blinks and looks away from him, letting out a shaky breath.

“Are you yet engaged to Lady Hild?”

“No, I have sent her away.”

“ _Sent her away_?” Lothíriel gapes at him, incredulous. “You-- But how could you--”

“You have heard this news from your queen, but you would still have me marry another?”

“ _This news_ is not likely to be something your councillors will be willing to consider in choosing your bride,” she says flatly. “I would have you marry, and soon, so that my lady will stop raising the issue with me. It has made my life here very uncomfortable.”

He sets his glass down on a table and moves to sit next to her.

“Does the idea of having my child make you uncomfortable?”

“Yes, it does.” 

She glances behind her as if wondering if she should scoot away from him on the small sofa, but seems to think better of it and looks back at him stubbornly, with her chin stuck out and her jaw set.

“Why?”

“Many reasons.”

“For example?”

“My very presence in your city was the cause of some turmoil only a few months ago.”

Éomer chews at the inside of his cheek, thinking. Then, he sets his arm on the back of the sofa, nearly around her shoulders, and looks up at her in the soft, available way he knows she has trouble resisting.

“Stop,” she says quietly.

“I have missed you,” he says, and she looks away from him.

“You would miss me less if you had kept Lady Hild in Edoras and accepted your councillors’ advice.”

“ _Lothíriel_ ,” he says significantly, and she looks back at him. He is so close to her, and he dips his head still closer to hers, and finally sees a little of the hardness in her eyes melt.

“Will you not help me be strong?” she says in a small voice, and Éomer feels a pang of guilt. There is pain in her eyes now, and the sight of it is a knife twisting in his gut. He lifts his hand to her cheek, wishing she would let him soothe her.

“You need not be strong with me,” he pleads. “Please, my love,” he says, echoing the words they had spoken to each other when he had been inside her, and she had been wrapped around him, and the world had been nothing short of perfect. 

It’s all the encouragement she needs. She sighs and then surges up against him, pressing her lips to his. For the first time since his arrival in Minas Tirith the night before, Éomer feels himself truly relax. Lothíriel kisses him and wraps her arms around his neck. When their mouths open and his tongue slides against hers, she whimpers and holds him tighter, and for a long while, Éomer feels as though no harmful thing in the world could touch them. He’s contemplating lifting her from the couch and carrying her to the nearby bed, spread with fine Gondorian linens that he aches to make love to her on, when she pulls back from him slightly.

“Bar the door,” she whispers, and he smiles.

He is halfway across the room before he stops himself and turns back to her. She frowns at the look on his face. 

“I cannot,” he admits, paralyzed by guilt and the pledge he had made to Amrothos just hours earlier. “Your brother…”

She curses and looks away from him, then stands and smooths the front of her dress with her hands. 

Éomer crosses the room to return to her, sure he can convince her to stay longer.

“Come to Edoras and be my wife.”

“I am sure my fate lies elsewhere.”

“Your queen disagrees.” 

“You must marry.”

“I will be unmarried as long as you are.”

At that, something changes behind her eyes. Her back straightens and she nearly steps away from him, but he catches her hand.

“So that is what will happen next.”

“Do you also have the gift of foresight?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.

“No,” she shakes her head, irritated. “I will be made to marry. Then you will have no choice. I had hoped--” she looks away, despondent, her lower lip trembling until she sucks it in and holds it with her teeth.

“You had hoped to be the one to remain unmarried.”

“Yes,” she says quietly, “though I have even less choice in the matter than you do.”

“Shh,” he whispers, quieting his own thoughts as much as her concerns. He had been so busy keeping Lady Hild away and his councillors at bay, he had barely thought of _her_ marrying. He takes a deep breath, working hard to quiet the unwelcome image of her in the arms of another man. “Do not think of that now.”

Éomer lifts his hand, curling his finger under her chin, lifting her face up to his and kissing her again. Some of the tension leaves her body, her hands lift to his waist, and the door behind them opens.

  
  
  


* * *

_**Éowyn** _

  
  


“Oh, for--”

Éomer and Lothíriel spring apart; he crosses the room in an instant and catches the door just as Éowyn tries to pull it shut. He looks down at her with the same murderous look he used to give her when she teased him in front of his gaggle of friends.

“You won’t tell anyone,” he says, and it sounds like an order.

Éowyn lets go of the door pull and crosses her arms. She is used to standing her ground against him.

“Who would I tell?”

“Your damned husband, for a start,” he growls.

“How dare you.”

“Just,” he has the decency to look abashed, “please don’t tell.”

“Your secrets are not mine to keep.”

“Éowyn…”

“Please,” Lothíriel steps forward, her hand on Éomer’s arm, looking at Éowyn with pleading eyes.

“You did tell me you were done with this.”

“I did,” Lothíriel says, straightening her back and trying to regain some lost dignity, “I am.”

Éomer turns to look at her and Lothíriel looks up at him. Something unspoken passes between them. Éowyn is standing close enough to see the hunger and love in Lothíriel’s expression, close enough to see how Éomer’s body draws closer to her, almost imperceptibly.

Éomer nods and turns back to his sister, “We are,” he presses the door closed against Éowyn, forcing her to step back into the hall, “very done. With this. Starting tomorrow.” 

Éowyn closes her eyes and resists the urge to pound the door and stamp her foot. The guards bracketing Éomer’s door are already struggling to pretend that they haven’t seen her unceremoniously shut out of her brother’s room, and so she holds her chin up as she turns and beats a furious retreat to her own rooms.

*******

That evening, Éowyn strides into the great hall on the arm of her husband. After returning from Edoras, they had disagreed about Lothíriel and her brother, and it had driven them apart for several brutal weeks. Éowyn’s indignation had been severe; she had dearly wanted to see her brother as happy as she was, and had hated seeing him so defeated. But after a while, they had made their way back to each other, agreeing not to discuss the subject further. Now, she is happy enough to be on Faramir’s arm, fairly glowing with love for him, but what she had seen earlier in Éomer’s rooms burns at the back of her mind.

The hall is bustling with activity, the scene of so many arrivals over the course of the day. Faramir is almost immediately greeted by Elessar, who smiles fondly at Éowyn, as he always does, before pulling her husband away for an evening of hard drinking and heavy conversation.

Left alone, she scans the crowd for faces that are not just familiar, but welcome, and at last spots Marshal Erkenbrand, who makes his way through the noisy throng to her side.

“My lady,” Erkenbrand addresses her, smiling, bowing deeply, and handing her a glass of wine she gladly accepts.

“What a welcome sight you are,” Éowyn smiles back at him. “A bit of home.”

“Ah, but you are home now, my lady.”

Éowyn shrugs good-naturedly and sips her wine. “If you say so.”

Erkenbrand nods and hesitates, wringing his hands. 

“Though you are now a great lady of Gondor, I wonder if you might do a favor for Rohan.”

“For Rohan?” Éowyn keeps her smile on, but a sense of danger pulls at her. She has another sip, but the wine has turned sour on her tongue.

“It concerns your brother.”

“Of course it does.”

“He is acting like a fool.”

“Be careful,” she warns, looking at Erkenbrand sharply.

Erkenbrand smiles apologetically and shifts from foot to foot. “Even great men - great kings - are fools in love. I fear it will be his downfall. He must give her up.”

“Give who up?” she glares and sighs at him, frustrated that even here she cannot escape her brother’s melodrama.

“You know very well who, my lady.”

“And you think I have the power to change his mind?” Éowyn raises her eyebrows.

“You may,” Erkenbrand says, gently. “There are few other options, now.”

“And what is the best option, now? If my intervention does not work?”

“He will be forced to marry and provide an heir.” Éowyn scoffs, unconvinced by the idea that her brother could be _forced_ to do anything. But Erkenbrand presses on. “If he does not, if he remains unmarried as long as he cannot marry his lady of Gondor, as he says he will, he risks the certain prospect of civil war. The country lords _will_ rise up against him if he does not marry one of their daughters.”

Erkenbrand’s words are like ice water. Éowyn thinks of the war that Rohan’s marshal describes, and feels the blood rush from her face.

“The Rohirrim will follow their king.”

“Yes,” Erkenbrand sighs, “and they will fight farmers and blacksmiths in the name of the great House of Eorl. The men of Rohan that Sauron’s forces could not kill will be slain by their own countrymen.”

“I am still not sure I can convince him of this, as you say.”

“There is a piece of information you can share with him that may sway his mind.”

“I cannot imagine what could.”

“Lady Lothíriel is to be married soon.”

“What? There has been no announcement. How soon?”

“I have convinced her father to make his negotiations more speedy. She will wed the son of the Lord of Linhir. She will return to the sea, where she belongs.”

“The son of--” Éowyn sputters, remembering the sandy-haired young man she had met only hours before in the Citadel. “But he is barely sixteen!”

“Yes,” Erkenbrand says coolly, “Old enough to take a wife.”

“To take…” Éowyn trails off, thinking. 

“It is as I said,” he speaks slowly, as though he were explaining a simple idea to a child. Éowyn feels a hot bloom spread across her throat and cheeks as she remembers all the things she had forgotten she hated about the men of Rohan. “The king says he will remain unmarried as long as he cannot marry her. If he will not choose to marry another, then she will be made to.”

“I understand,” Éowyn says carefully, then pushes her way through the crowd until she makes her way to Lady Arwen’s side, under the guise of paying her respects. There, she has to exchange forced smiles with Lothíriel, but she is beyond the reach of Erkenbrand, or any other man who would interrupt her to ask her favors. Doing her best to forget the unpleasant task he had tried to commission her into undertaking, she passes a perfectly normal evening with the queen’s ladies, enveloped in a soft bubble of femininity, and at last retires to bed at her husband’s side.

  
  


***

  
  


For another week, Éowyn pretends not to notice how her brother and the queen’s lady dance around each other. She watches as they smile at each other across crowded rooms and sneak off together when they imagine no one is looking at them. Éowyn also sees the pointed way Erkenbrand looks at her, and she knows that she cannot ignore his request, after all. Not if the future of Rohan truly does depend on it. And, at the very least, she has information that her brother may as well learn from friend, rather than foe.

Finally, Éowyn finds Éomer in his room, alone, in the early-evening hours before Arwen’s coronation, and sits down with him over glasses of wine and the Citadel’s famed buttery biscuits.

She keeps him in good spirits as long as she can. And then a lull in the conversation offers her an opportunity.

“Erkenbrand says you must give her up,” she tells him gently, and he gives her a dark look.

“He understands nothing.”

“He may not understand how your heart works, but he understands Rohan. He understands what you are risking, I think, perhaps, better than you do.”

“I serve my people. Rohan may have a long road ahead, but we have started down it. I have done my duty, and I have a right to choose my own queen.”

Éowyn sighs and tells him about Lord of Linhir’s son, that Lothíriel will marry him and spend the rest of her days on the far edge of Middle Earth. She doesn’t tell him the boy’s age - she knows that Éomer will be devastated enough without learning that the man he has lost Lothíriel to is barely a man at all. That will come in time. Éowyn tries to change the subject, but her brother has turned pale and his hand shakes as he sets down his glass. 

“Please go,” he tells her quietly, and she can see already that he is both with her and far away. “I shall see you at the coronation tonight.”

She leaves him alone, but the hollow look in his eyes follows her like a ghost.

***

That evening, the crowded, candlelit hall fills again as the nobles of Gondor and Rohan gather to see Arwen crowned. Éowyn tries to focus on the events at hand, to take pride in her new country, and joy in the happiness she sees on Faramir’s face. But she knows that the feeling of peace and contentment can’t last, not when she knows that her brother still faces a gauntlet.

The feast following the coronation is a horrorshow, a parade of indignities Éowyn watches her brother suffer in silence. Lothíriel is ashen-faced and serious, glued to the side of her queen, but when Arwen is inevitably pulled away and the dancing begins, Lothíriel is led away by her father and brought to the side of her betrothed. It is an obvious mismatch; the Lord of Linhir’s son is a sullen youth who is only begrudgingly persuaded to dance with his fiancée. Where Lothíriel is stiff and dignified, her partner is clumsy and careless.

Éowyn watches as her brother, shocked and numb, stays in his seat, buffeted on either side by Erkenbrand and Háma. She sits with him for a while, but finds him unresponsive and her gorge rises. How cruel it seems, she thinks, to have sent her as a messenger before Éomer would be made to face his rival. How horrible, to pit _him_ \- a great King of Rohan, as bright as the sun, as strong as a stallion - against a mere boy. But now there is nothing to do but glare at Erkenbrand, who looks so aggressively self-satisfied that Éowyn clenches her fists in her lap and fights the impulse to punch his nose. At last Éomer leaves early, cutting short his torture, ready to pack his bags and return to Rohan in the morning.

It’s the last Éowyn sees of her brother for a long, long while.

  
  



	4. Éomer & Lothíriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real world is a dark place right now, so I didn't want to leave Éomer and Lothíriel where they were at the end of the last chapter for too long. The last chapter will wrap everything up a little more, but absolutely none of it is written yet so that might take a little longer. Hope you all enjoy, and, as always, thanks for reading!

**Lothíriel**

  
  


After Éomer leaves Minas Tirith, Lothriel stays in her rooms as much as she can. She learns early on that venturing out too often means she will inevitably be placed at the side of her betrothed. When she is lucky, the boy ignores her. When she is less fortunate, she is made to dance with him or eat at his side while he makes no attempt to converse with her. In truth, she is not so much older than him, but the longer she spends with him, the more notable the age difference seems. His biggest fault, though, remains that he is not Éomer and she knows she will not love him.

When Éomer had stayed in Minas Tirith a full week for the queen’s coronation, it had been the longest time they had been allowed to be in each other’s company, a week Lothíriel is sure she shall remember as long as she lives. She knows now that the moments she shared with him - the quick, secret kisses, the late evenings sitting and talking by the fire in his rooms, and one long, lazy afternoon when he had laid her out on his bed and kissed her and touched her and told her every sweet thing a lover could say for a full hour before duty pulled him away - were their last.

In her long hours of solitude, Lothíriel thinks of the wrongs she has committed - smoking her pipe, fornication and indecent thoughts, lying to her cousin and herself - those transgressions she has made just to make her life livable as it is. And now a great lot of nothing stretches out before her - the same kind of sad, soulless, wasted life her aunt and her mother had been condemned to: a marriage without love, a handful of children to rear until a final, unceremonious death. Like them, she will never be more than _the_ _wife of_. 

It’s the first uncomfortably warm evening of the year when Amrothos interrupts yet another evening spent staring at the tapestries on her walls, periodically picking at her embroidery projects and trying not to think of what lies ahead. He bursts into her room, finding her sitting on her sofa, and takes the seat across from her.

“You cannot stay in here forever,” he starts, and Lothíriel bristles at the criticism and shrugs to seem nonchalant about it.

“Yes, I am aware. Soon enough I will be carted out of Minas Tirith to take my place in Linhir.”

“That is the only path forward you can see?”

“Can you see another?”

“I would like to see my dear sister happy, instead of resigned to a fate she detests.”

Lothíriel sets down her embroidery hoop and faces him directly. “What can I do, then?”

“Not _nothing_.”

“Then _what_?” she thunders, determined to be heard, fighting back a choking sob and clenching her fists in her lap. Weeks of quiet frustration, all the sorrow she had tried to lock up in this stone room, pour out. “I have no recourse here. I must do as I am told until it kills me.”

“And perhaps the palace at Linhir will have a high tower you can throw yourself off of.”

He looks at her with a strange mix of disappointment and sympathy. Lothíriel tries not to remember all the times he had saved her from their elder brothers’ teasing, how he had comforted her and dried her tears after she returned to Minas Tirith, and how he had already tried to intervene on her behalf with Éomer. She breathes deeply and tries to calm herself.

“At least I shall be closer to home,” she concedes, thinking of the seaside castle they had grown up in together. At least she can count on a yearly visit from one of her brothers. Perhaps she’ll even see her father from time to time.

“No,” Amrothos says, firm and determined, and then, cryptically, “Linhir is not for you. We will follow Lady Éowyn’s example.”

He grabs her hand and leads her out of her room, pulling her through the quiet nighttime corridors of the Citadel until they are in his quarters. He sits her on his bed and opens his wardrobe, pulling out his own clothing and tossing shirts, pants, coats and boots on the mattress next to her. She watches as he works. Amrothos, the youngest and smallest of her brothers, whose clothing, with some slight adjustments, would be a suitable fit for her.

“You will dress and ride into battle,” he instructs.

“Ride to Edoras?”

“Yes.”

“I cannot.”

“You can.”

“You must come with me.”

“I must stay here to be sure no one follows you.”

“I cannot go alone.”

He stops his work and bends to look her in the eye.

“You are no fainthearted woman. You know what lies ahead of you here. If you cannot accept it, you must seek your own fortune,” he reaches to take her by the shoulders. “Is marrying a man you do not love and wilting away in Linhir something you wish to accept?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you still wish to marry Éomer King?”

“Yes,” she says quietly, trying to overcome the shame she still feels at wanting someone she has told herself she cannot have.

“Then have a little courage,” he hands her a silver flask from his coat pocket and pats the stack of clothes on the bed next to her, “and dress yourself. The Lady Éowyn wore pants when she slew the Witch King of Angmar, and so shall you when you conquer the road to Edoras.”

***

Two hours later, the moonless night has grown considerably darker. Amrothos sneaks to the Citadel’s kitchens to fill a bag with provisions, planning to meet Lothíriel near the city’s stables. She makes her way there alone, wearing Amrothos’ pants, boots, shirt, tunic and cloak. She has flattened her breasts with a snug band of fabric and coiled her hair into a tight bun, hidden under the cloak’s hood. On the way to the stables, she tries to seem inconspicuous, to let her formal walk transform into a looser, more masculine gait. She worries that she looks ridiculous, before realizing that the whole venture is ridiculous and whether or not she can convince the few late-night, drunken passersby she encounters that she is a man is only a small part of a larger farce.

At last, she reaches the stables. Amrothos scans the area, sees no one, and takes her hand as they enter. In the gloomy barn - he has not even dared to bring a lantern - they squint to read the names on each stall, looking for a familiar name, for a horse that is strong enough to take Lothíriel to Edoras but not so notable as to be missed.

“Where--” Lothíriel starts, but Amrothos hisses at her to be quiet a moment before a lantern swings around to catch them in its yellow glare. 

They are frozen, caught, and for a moment Lothíriel is too startled to see who is on the other end of the light. Then, she comes into focus. Éowyn looks at them with wide eyes. She wears a long shift covered by a crimson cloak that falls past her knees. Her heavy boots are covered in stable muck. Her messy hair falls over her shoulders. It’s clear that she hadn’t expected to be interrupted, either.

“What--”

Éowyn looks at Lothíriel’s pants and boots, and the bulging sack in Amrothos’ hands. Her brow is furrowed. Lothíriel holds her breath.

“My lady--” Amrothos starts, but Éowyn silences him with a gesture, then curls her hand to beckon them further into the stables.

“This one,” she says, opening the latch to a stall containing a strong grey mare with soft, dark eyes. 

Éowyn says nothing further, but helps Lothíriel lift and fasten her saddle while Amrothos secures the bag of supplies. When the horse is readied, Éowyn reaches into the pocket of her jacket and hands Lothíriel a remarkable folding knife, which Lothíriel tucks into her pants pocket. Amrothos gives her a final hug and boosts her up.

As Lothíriel rides out into the dark, cool pre-dawn morning, her vision of her own future starts to change. Slowly, creeping at the edges of her mind, she feels hope.

  
  


* * *

  
  


**Éomer**

  
  


In the weeks since their king left Minas Tirith humiliated and defeated, the country lords of Rohan continue to work hard to see one of their eligible ladies installed as queen. Éomer holds his ground as best he can, refusing to meet with their candidates, but he knows that his resistance can only last so long, and is useless at this point anyway. Lothíriel is to be married, he reminds himself daily. It is a thought that chips away at his heart, at his ability to feel hopeful, even as he throws himself into his work and his duties as king. 

At last, Erkenbrand, who Éomer knows is too important a figure to dismiss and send back to the Westfold and so must be endured, organizes a feast at which Éomer will be forced to entertain the ladies who would be his wife. And so, the Golden Hall is lit with torches, the kitchens of Meduseld buzz with activity, and the city plays host for lords and ladies from across the realm. Éomer does his best to stay cheerful about the ordeal, welcoming his guests and making sure each is looked after.

By the night of the feast, he has built a hard, brittle shell around himself. He moves through the lively crowd in the Golden Hall easily, feeling cold and detached. He dances with a tall, elegant woman from Aldburg and a young lady from Grimslade who giggles uncontrollably when he takes her in his arms. The candidate from Upbourn presses herself so tightly against him, grinding and leering at him so obviously that he cuts their dance short before she can embarrass herself further. Countless others pass through his orbit, each doing their best to break through to him with attempts at conversation or humor. 

Finally, Éomer takes his place on the throne at the front of the room, pretending to be deep in thought, considering his decision, and that keeps the worst of them at bay. And he _is_ deep in thought, as it happens. As he watches the feast carry on before him, he thinks of what Lothíriel had told him in Minas Tirith. He thinks of Queen Arwen’s vision of his son, _their_ son, the king who would bring peace and prosperity to Rohan. Word has come already that the queen is carrying the heir to the throne of Gondor, lending even more credence to her abilities. But if he chooses a queen from the ladies assembled before him, he rejects this possible future. What calamity might befall them all if he denies the queen’s foresight - if he denies the longings of his own heart - and chooses a lady of Rohan who might give him a successor who would bring his country to ruin rather than building on Éomer’s own efforts? But he has so little choice now. _Let her go_ , he tells himself for the millionth time but, as always, he knows immediately that he cannot.

At last, Háma approaches him. 

“Will you speak to them, your grace?” he asks. “They await your choice.”

“Do you see your queen in this hall tonight?” Éomer shoots back.

Háma purses his lips. “I see many fine ladies.”

“But not her?”

“Not her, your grace.” Háma gives him a sad smile, handing his king a tankard of ale. Éomer sighs and nods and stands.

“I thank you, my friends, for being here tonight,” Éomer’s voice booms across the hall, silencing the cacophony. “I know you have come here with high hopes of meeting your future queen,” Éomer hesitates, his voice fading as he finds Erkenbrand in the crowd. He can see the warning in his marshal’s eyes; Éomer squares his shoulders and presses on. “As we well know, the daughters of Rohan are very beautiful. If I could, I should marry every one of them,” he pauses to accommodate the cheerful pounding of tankards on tables and a rousing holler that rises from the back of the hall and sweeps forward and up until the great room is filled with one deafening whoop of pride. As the crowd sobers to hear his next words, Éomer takes a swig from his own mug, letting the warmth of the ale give him the scraps of courage he needs to carry on. 

“As it is, I cannot consent to marrying any of them.” Éomer swallows and clears his throat, ignoring the murmur of discontent and confusion now rippling through the room. “As those in my council know, there is only one woman I wish to marry, but they have withheld their approval. I have told them, and I will tell you all now: my heart is not mine to give. I have given it to her. Wholly. Entirely. She is the queen I have chosen, for myself and for my people, but I am told again and again that the union is impossible. Perhaps there may come a day when I am made to marry another, but if you should see me do such a thing, I swear to you all now that it will be an act of duty that will betray my own instincts for what is best for Rohan.” 

He looks down at his drink, faltering; for a moment, pulled under by the thought that it will still be necessary for him to marry. When he looks up again, he sees dismay and shock on the faces of his countryfolk that sucks the air out of his lungs. He catches the eye of the girl from Grimslade he had danced with earlier and sees that she’s pink-faced and tearful.

“I am sorry,” he gasps, feeling his chest tighten with panic and guilt, “to the ladies.”

Éomer hears a man’s voice give an indignant cry, and flinches, feeling unbearably exposed and overheated. For a wild moment, he longs for the battlefield. How strange and frightening it is, he thinks, to stand before his people and bare his heart. How much easier it would be to ride into battle and wet a sword with orc blood. Éomer fidgets for a moment, then gives a slight nod of his head and steps down from the dais; the crowd parts as he makes his way to a doorway, then a series of hallways, and then, finally, his own bedchamber.

Once inside, he pushes open the shutters that cover his window and takes deep, gulping breaths of the cooler air outside. Over the grassy, quiet plains he sees before him, dark clouds loom, letting loose a torrent of summer rain.

* * *

  
  


**Lothíriel**

Lothíriel rides for a week, surviving off of lembas bread and bits of dried beef. She keeps off the road a ways, but always in sight of it, and is only spotted by a few traveling merchants who barely give her a second look. In the crisp evenings, she warms herself by campfire and sleeps under a waxing moon. 

She questions herself on an hourly basis. Was it madness to leave Minas Tirith? What will she do if Éomer cannot accept her? What will he think when he sees her covered in road-dust and wearing her brother’s clothes? Will he think she has entirely lost her mind? But as she watches the world around her change from Gondor’s riparian lowlands to Rohan’s expansive prairies and snowy mountains, her doubts start to fade.

She crosses into the Eastfold, and she feels light. The clear, thin air of Rohan smells clean; she passes blossoming, life-filled meadows and farms with children that run out to wave at her as she passes. The sky above her is huge, hung with enormous, pillowy clouds by day and glittering with stars by night; the sheer size of it reminds her of the sky over Dol Amroth, where one’s view of the world is cut off only by the line of the horizon. As she nears Edoras, the silvery sides of mountains jut into the landscape. She feels herself fall in love with a place. 

For a long week, she enjoys nearly perfect weather. The night that she rides into Edoras, it pours. Her horse gamely trudges through the city’s muddy gates, where she is stopped by two guards who instruct her to dismount and follow them into a small, square guardhouse. 

The room she is led into is smokey, dark despite the few candles that illuminate it, cramped and sparsely furnished, without even a chair to sit on. While she had been effective enough in convincing those who saw her from a distance that she was a male traveler, up close the two men can see from her face that she is a woman, and exchange a perplexed look. Lothíriel, still blinking raindrops out of her eyes, tries to stand straight and still and not shiver under her damp cloak. 

“What’s your business in this city?” the shorter guard asks, rubbing at the blond stubble on his jaw.

“I would like to request an audience with the king.”

The taller guard gives a short, loud laugh. “It’s late, miss. The king’s just finished a feast in the Golden Hall,” he tells her, smirking, “and unless there’s something in it for us, it’ll be hard work to convince him he ought to grant an audience to a rider from Gondor at this hour, however pretty she may be.”

“Sir Háma, then,” she says quickly, pulling to her mind the only other friendly name she knows in Edoras. “I wish to see Sir Háma.”

The shorter guard huffs, looking disappointed. 

“Sir Háma it is, then,” the tall guard shrugs and shuffles off, returning a few minutes later with Háma following him. Háma pulls back the wet hood of his cloak and looks her up and down, his eyes wide and his mouth open. After a moment, he remembers himself and lowers his head.

“My l--”

Lothíriel shakes her head, looking to the guards over his shoulder, not sure that she’s ready to have anyone else in Edoras know that she is in the city, at least not until she has managed to see Éomer. Háma stops himself and turns to the guards, ordering them to prepare a guest room. 

“I shall bring him to you,” Háma tells her as he leaves, and Lothíriel finds herself left alone again.

She shifts from foot to foot and feels her thigh muscles stretch and ache, tender after days of riding. She wrings her hands and feels calluses. She licks her lips and finds them chapped. She frantically pulls her wet hair out of its nest-like bun and combs it with her fingers. How different she will seem to him, she thinks, panicked. How disappointed--

The guardhouse door clicks and swings open, and then he is in front of her - Éomer, shaking off his waterlogged cloak and handing it to Háma - and then the door is closed behind him and they are alone together. He fills the small room with his body and his warmth and the smell of soap and saddle oil. For a long, terrible moment, he just stares at her, unblinking. She is overwhelmed by him; her mind goes blank - all the things she had planned to say to him are forgotten. Rain beats hard against the guardhouse roof. 

“I have made a very unusual choice,” she admits in a rush. “Perhaps more than one. Several, actually.”

“What…” he opens and closes his mouth, “Your clothes…”

“Yes--” she starts, but when an acceptable explanation doesn’t spring to mind, she clamps her mouth shut again.

“Why have you come here?” he asks. His eyes are fixed on hers, but he looks dazed, as though he isn’t sure if he’s awake or dreaming. He steps closer to her and Lothíriel feels her head grow lighter. “Have you come to… to…”

“To stay, yes.” Her breath catches as he reaches to take one of her hands in his. He blinks, looking at her with wonder shining in his eyes. “As, as your guest. Or however you will have me.”

Éomer pulls her into his arms then. As her arms wrap around his waist and her hands spread wide on the curving muscles of his back, she feels his body hiccup and sob. He turns his face into the soft place between her neck and shoulder and his tears smear against her already-damp skin. She holds him tighter.

“My wife,” he says in a thick voice. “Stay as my wife.”

Lothíriel leans back, just far enough to see his face in the dim candlelight. “Can I?” she says quietly, running her fingers along his cheek.

“Yes,” he says, and for now it’s enough explanation. He gathers her against him again, and kisses her until her head spins, until she is breathing hard and clinging to his shoulders. 

Twice he tries to pull away from her and twice he fails, pulling her back against him and kissing her again. Lothíriel can’t seem to keep her hands from pulling at his jacket, his shoulders, his waist, anything to keep him closer to her. His mouth is hot on hers, he weaves his fingers into her hair, his arm slides under her cloak and around her, warming her through. It takes what seems like a monumental effort for Éomer to step away from her at last and open the guardhouse door, revealing Háma waiting patiently on the other side of it, tucked under a small overhang to escape the driving rain.

“See that she has supper and a hot bath and clothes brought to her,” he orders.

“Yes, your grace.”

“Escort her to her room. I must--” he hesitates glancing at Lothíriel, then back at Háma. “You know what I must do.”

Before he leaves, Éomer grabs Háma by the arm and whispers something in his ear. Háma looks up at his king, then to Lothíriel with a new expression of awe and recognition that makes a chill run down her back. Then Éomer pulls on his cloak and steps out into the soggy streets of Edoras, walking with a quick, determined stride.

As instructed Háma leads Lothíriel to a guest room, similar to the mid-sized room she had stayed in on her last trip to Edoras, with a wide hearth, wooden walls and narrow windows now covered by closed shutters. A fire is started in the hearth for her. A pair of maids brings in a large tub with hot water and a neat stack of shifts, stockings, dresses, and shoes. The women speak to her in soft, deferential tones as they help her clean her body and wash and comb her hair. A tray of food is brought, and while the maids busy themselves turning down her bed and filling her wardrobe, Lothíriel dines on lamb and root vegetables as the warmth from the fire dries her hair into long, loose waves. It’s a level of treatment she hadn’t received on her last stay in this city, when she had been in the service of a great lady rather than treated like one herself, and Lothíriel wonders what it was that Éomer had whispered to Háma in the guardhouse.

Once Lothíriel is dressed in a nightgown and wrapped in a robe, a knock at the door startles all three of them. One of the maids opens the door, then gives a deep curtsey, opening the door wider and stepping out of the way. Éomer gives them each a nod, and they leave hastily, each casting a last look over their shoulder at Lothíriel.

“You are really here,” Éomer says quietly, once the door has closed behind them.

“Yes.”

“You rode all this way?”

“Yes.”

Éomer’s brow furrows. He fidgets and looks down at his hands.

“What about your fiancé?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Amrothos will…smooth things over, I suppose.”

“Right.”

“Are you really glad to see me? I haven’t--” 

He looks up at her and takes a few steps into the room.

“Yes,” he says quickly, “Yes. Only tonight, I could have-- They all wanted me to--”

“To what?”

He takes a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. Not anymore.”

Éomer crosses the room towards her. She crosses and uncrosses her arms, feeling the full, discomfiting weight of what she has done coming to Rohan. If she has managed to avoid causing a catastrophic incident between their two nations, if she has avoided angering Éomer’s councillors and spoiling his reign, then she will be his wife, and, more than that, a queen. The idea is strange, foreign, too much to hold in her head at once.

“Do your councillors know I am in Edoras?”

“Yes,” he smiles. “It’s safe to say everyone knows you’re in the city now.”

“What will we do?”

At last he is in front of her, raising one hand to move a long lock of her hair behind her shoulder, his fingers grazing the tender side of her throat.

“For tonight, nothing more,” he says, and she furrows her brow. “There will be plenty to deal with in the morning,” he concedes, seeing that she wants some kind of answer, “but for now, you must rest after your long journey.”

Lothíriel looks up at him. He is so close now, and she thinks of the days she spent coming here, the nights she had spent alone, under the stars, wanting him as much as she doubted herself.

“Do you suppose I shall have a restful night?” 

He watches her mouth, and the look on his face makes her heart catch and sing. He is lit up by firelight, glowing and beautiful.

“Hm,” he looks thoughtful, then pulls at the sash that ties her robe closed. “Perhaps I shall stay to make sure you sleep soundly.”

“Yes--” she starts, wanting to say something sultry and tempting back to him, but she is stopped when he pulls open her robe and slides his hands under it, pulling her against him. She feels the already-hard line of his cock against her hip. Her need for him rises like a wave and pulses between her thighs.

He pushes her robe off her shoulders, letting it fall down her arms, then takes it in one hand and tosses it aside. Her linen nightgown is no match for the northern night air, and Lothíriel shivers. Éomer frowns, then takes her by the hips and walks her backward until the backs of her thighs hit the hard side of the bed’s frame. He guides her to sit on the high bed, then nudges her knees apart with his. Lothíriel looks up at his face, and she sees everything - his arousal, his love for her, how hard he is working to keep control over himself. 

“Lie back,” he says in a low voice, and _oh_ how the sound of that simple instruction makes her tremble.

She does as he tells her, leaning back on her elbows, then letting her back meet the mattress. She is already breathing hard, trying to keep her restless body still, wanting so much for him to touch her, to cover her body with his, to push himself inside her and relieve the sweet ache between her legs. Instead, he looks at her quietly, watching her face as he reaches to catch the hem of her nightgown, pulling it up over her knees and up her thighs until she is exposed, feeling the cool night air on the outside of her thighs and the warmth of his body between them. His fingers barely graze her body as he works, before he finally settles his hands on her waist. Lothíriel nearly growls in frustration.

“ _Please_ ,” she begs, wriggling underneath him. 

Then, in what seems like an instant, he is gone from her line of sight - she struggles to her elbows just in time to see him on his knees before her, pulling her to the edge of the bed and pressing his mouth to her cunt. His eyes close in the satiated expression of a once-ravenous man. His grip on her hips tightens, holding her to him as his lips and tongue work. Lothíriel cries out before she can quiet herself, then falls back on the bed, helpless and ecstatic, clutching the bedsheets and his hands where he holds her hips. He hooks her knees over his shoulders and pulls her tighter against his face, the stubble on his jaw brushing against the tenderest parts of her already-sore thighs. He stays there for a long time, until she has come once, then twice, and is reduced to an incoherent, babbling mess, telling him over and over how happy he makes her, how much she loves him, how she wants him in her bed every night from this night on. 

Finally, he releases her, wiping his chin with his sleeve and giving her an enormously self-satisfied smile. She reaches up and pulls at his shoulders until he is lying on top of her, heavy and wonderful, and she grabs at his still-closed belt.

“Not until we are married,” he tells her, as he had on that long afternoon in Minas Tirith, months ago now. She had hoped his position on the subject had changed, and it’s a hard answer to take while he is lying between her legs.

“You are still hopeful that it can be done? That we can be married?” she sighs, running her hands over his shoulders and wondering if he would at least consent to removing a few of his own layers of clothing.

“More than ever,” he tells her, and he goes on to say that she is to meet his councillors in the morning, and they will make their case together. Lothíriel tries to hide her doubtful feelings, at least as long as he’s still in her arms.

“Whatever tomorrow may bring, however they may challenge you,” he strokes the side of her face, looking solemn and sincere, then, suddenly, as though he were repressing a smile, “remember that tonight you had the King of Rohan on his knees.”

She squirms under him. “Ridiculous,” she says, rolling her eyes as he chuckles to himself. She silences him with a roll of her hips. He kisses her, and no more is said for a long time. Then.

“I’ve needed you,” he tells her, looking at her with big eyes. “Not just… Not just like this. I’ve needed you _here_ , with me. I don’t like being here without you.”

“This is your home.”

“Now that you are here, yes.”

“Hm,” she hums, deep in thought. Minas Tirith never felt like her true home, and Dol Amroth was the home of her childhood years, left behind long ago. Her stay in Ithilien was too short to consider it home, and though she has developed a great deal of affection for Rohan already, it seems too early and presumptuous to give it that label. But here, in this bed, by this roaring fire, with Éomer in her arms, she feels a sense of belonging that no other place has given her.

“Are you nervous for tomorrow?” he whispers.

She laughs. “Yes.”

“I wish I knew what to tell you. I wish those country lords were less terrifying.”

She thinks for a moment about the peculiar difference between Rohan’s ruling classes and its people, who have been largely kind to her - the merchants she had bought tasty treats from on her first visit, the families she had passed on the road, even the gentleness of the maids who had attended her earlier that evening.

“I don’t want their approval. I don’t even want to see them, really. I want to meet your people.”

Éomer frowns; his brow furrows.

“I don’t understand.”

He rolls onto the mattress beside her and she sits up on one elbow.

“Your lords wonder if you are like your uncle. If you will be easily swayed by an outsider, or if instead _they_ can sway you. But there is one way to show that you are your own man, your own king. You once told me that they wanted you to be a new kind of king, unattached to Gondor. Instead, to be something truly different, you must be unattached to _them._ ”

“It cannot be so for a king. My obligations are to my people, I cannot but be attached to them.”

“Yes,” she leans forward, “ _Them_ . The people. _Your_ people. A king for the people, not the lords.”

“And if the common folk are my allies--”

“--so the lords must follow, or risk a war of a different kind.”

“We will walk through the streets of Edoras, and after that, the Golden Hall.” She smiles and Éomer gives her an appraising look. “A mind for marriage turned to politics is a dangerous thing.”

“It is all strategy, my love.”

“And risk.”

“As long as it is calculated. And acceptable.”

“Hm,” he nods, then narrows his eyes at her. “What sort of queen do you plan to be anyway?”

“The sort who knows the price of grain and calls on the fishmonger’s wife.”

“Something new, indeed.”

Éomer moves off the bed, standing and stripping to his pants and long undershirt, then sliding under the bedcovers.

“Have I--” she starts, struck by an anxious thought. “I have overstepped my position already.”

“No,” he gives her a broad smile as she joins him in bed. “You are exactly what I expected you to be,” he reaches across the sheets to take her hand, “My dear friend.”

  
  
  



	5. Éomer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was hard to finish, because it’s hard to leave this place and these characters behind. But I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, and I hope you all stay safe and well <3

The King’s Council delays their wedding by a year. Éomer agrees to their terms, understanding that they ask only for time to adjust to the idea, and to become familiar with his choice of queen. Still, it is a hard thing to swallow, and Éomer does his best to seem more patient and more generous with his time than he feels. 

Lothíriel takes the news quietly, having little to say back to his grim-faced councillors. Instead, he sees her come alive when he walks with her through Edoras - on sunrise strolls when only the city’s bakeries are humming with activity, and on afternoon jaunts through the city’s marketplaces, where she buys flowers and fabric and hand pies that were a staple of his youth but are entirely new to her. The people of his city are delighted to see their king walk among them, and greet him with unexpected gifts and kind words. In the evenings, when he manages to finish his duties in time, he joins her on the steps of Meduseld, where they watch the sun lower itself behind the western mountains, casting the city in a blue-purple shadow from which emerge hundreds of tiny flickering candle lights. He sees his own country through her eyes, as a beautiful, unique place. He sees his people through her eyes, too - their welcoming nature and easy smiles. He realizes that he had considered Edoras, and Meduseld within it, as a cage meant to contain him, but with Lothíriel by his side, his view of his world expands. 

In short order, a thick stack of correspondence from Gondor arrives. Éomer and Lothíriel each receive letters from Imrahil and Faramir. Additional letters from Aragorn and Éowyn are addressed to Éomer, and one from Amrothos is addressed to Lothíriel. She collects her letters and disappears into her rooms with them. Éomer takes them to his study, alone, and reads through each.

Imrahil’s letter reveals both his irritation at seeing his daughter take matters into her own hands, and his cautious acceptance of her choice. Faramir extends a peace offering in the form of a gracious apology for the arguments they had had in Meduseld. Éowyn gives him a routine update on her life since she and Faramir returned to Ithilien, and closes her letter by wishing him well in his negotiations with his council. Finally, Aragorn grants his permission as the King of Gondor for Éomer to marry one of his subjects. 

Éomer writes responses to each of them, taking most of the afternoon to craft his reply (and his formal request for Lothíriel’s hand) to Imrahil. At last, he makes his way to Lothíriel’s rooms, and knocks quietly before letting himself in.

She sits on the sofa by her room’s hearth. Her eyes are raw, watery and pink; she clenches her jaw as she watches him come into the room. The letters he saw her receive earlier are still clutched in her small hand. Éomer sits next to her and wraps his arm around her. Her head leans heavy on his shoulder and he strokes her hair.

“What did your father say?”

“I have disappointed him.”

Éomer’s stomach turns. He tightens his arm around her.

“You will be a great Queen of Rohan,” he tells her softly. “He will be proud of you.”

“And if at the end of the year, your councillors decide not to permit us to marry…”

“Elessar has given his permission, and his blessing.” Lothíriel shifts and sits up to look at him. “We could not ask for a more powerful advocate. The queen’s prophecy all but ensures that he will do all he can to see us married.”

He meets her frown with a smile and tugs her against him again. She sets her letters aside, wraps her arm around his waist and presses her cheek against his chest. 

“I hope you are right,” she murmurs, and Éomer feels sure that he is.

  
  


***

His councillors do what they can to keep him busy. It isn’t hard to sense that they are still wary of Lothíriel, and Éomer does what he can to appease them while not denying himself. But at last, he begins to hear whispers about her, rumors about the impropriety of how often he visits her rooms at night, and forces himself to stop before her reputation is ruined. Instead, they begin to spend their post-sunset evenings in his King’s Solar, a semi-public space where his councillors have a right of entry and are free to interrupt them whenever they choose. It grinds at Éomer - the loss of a private refuge with Lothíriel - but he consoles himself with their daily walks and long fireside talks, no matter how often they might be interrupted. 

The first time he leaves her alone in Meduseld, he worries. As he tours the outer villages and assesses damage from raiding bands of orcs still passing through the Westfold, he thinks of her, left under Háma’s watchful eye, but still without him and what protection he can offer her. 

When he returns two weeks later, he rushes to change out of his riding armor and hurries to her room, only to find it empty, save for her maid, who tells him that Lothíriel is in Edoras. Lothíriel is often in the city, her maid tells him, and frequents the home for war widows. When he asks _why_ , he is told that Lothíriel leaves the Golden Hall carrying baskets of hot buns from the Meduseld kitchens or fresh embroidery supplies she receives from Amrothos. Captain Háma stays by her side, carrying what she cannot, and they return hours later, empty-handed but smiling and cheerful.

Éomer lingers in Meduseld, seeing that his trunks are unpacked correctly and listlessly answering the correspondence that has arrived in his absence. Finally, after the afternoon’s shadows have grown long, Lothíriel finds him in his solar and springs into his arms. He holds her and kisses her for a long while before they are interrupted by his steward and brought supper. When his table is spread with steaming dishes and the room fills with the warm scent of roast meat and the sweet, earthy tang of poured mead, they finally sit to eat.

“I missed you earlier,” he says at last. “How have you found yourself so often at the widow’s home?”

Lothíriel pauses in the midst of cutting her chicken, grins and nearly wiggles with excitement. 

“Shortly after you left, I discovered a fascinating piece of information which fortunately is now no longer something I must hold in confidence.”

Éomer gestures for her to continue, and in between bites she tells him that Háma is involved in a liaison with one of the inhabitants of the widow’s home, but the lady had believed herself too poor to marry. She tells him that together they had devised a plan to become regular visitors at the home - Lothíriel with her arms full of supplies and Háma as her escort. And in the last days, she says, the lady had accepted Háma’s proposal and the two were fit to be married in no more than a month. At last, Lothíriel leans back in her seat, folding her hands across her full stomach and looking at him with a satisfied smile. Éomer watches her for a moment, speechless, caught unaware by the idea that his captain had guarded such a secret so closely.

“Háma?” he manages at last. “How did you come to know this?”

Her brow creases. Her thumb runs across the back of her other hand. “I think Háma would be disappointed in me if I told you,” she tells him. “It was an embarrassing scene.”

“Ah,” Éomer nods and laughs, enjoying the sight of the blush that spreads across her cheeks, which she tries to hide behind her mug of mead.

An hour later, she rises from the table. He is forced to say goodnight to her, knowing that her maids await her return to her chamber, where they will prepare her for bed. Éomer pushes away from the table as she passes his chair, grabs her waist and pulls her onto his lap. Lothíriel drapes her arms around his neck; he pulls at her skirts until he can feel the soft skin of her thigh above the hem of her stockings. She takes his face in her hands and has just kissed him, just slid her tongue into his mouth and pressed her body against his in a way that makes him grip her tighter, when Erkenbrand clears his throat, having entered the room entirely unnoticed. Lothíriel jumps away from Éomer as though he were the hot handle of a cooking pot she had accidentally touched. She curtsies and Erkenbrand bows his head at her. Her face has gone still and expressionless. She told Éomer once that she had learned from Amrothos that Erkenbrand had conspired to see her married to the Lord of Linhir’s son, a plan she had spoiled by escaping to Rohan. Though she rarely speaks of or to him, she treats Erkenbrand with an extreme amount of caution.

She slips out quietly as Erkenbrand pushes aside their dirty plates to spread a thick stack of maps and account books on the table in front of Éomer. For what seems like the millionth time, Éomer bites his tongue and watches as Lothíriel disappears into the dark hall, and out of his view.

  
  


***

  
  


Éomer knows that Lothíriel continues to visit the widows’ home in the coming weeks, despite the fact that Háma’s match is made. In their evenings together, she tells him a little of it - the hospitality of the women there, how much they enjoy the rich, honey-brown cheese she brings them from Meduseld’s kitchens, how the children who live there entice her into their make-believe games. But they talk of many other things, too, and Éomer’s understanding of what Lothíriel does in Edoras is shuffled into the background of his life, a small, though not unimportant, detail. Until the day it rises up, forcing its way into his world of council meetings and the business of running his kingdom.

It’s a court day. Éomer and the members of his court - the oldest and most powerful members of his council - are seated in the Golden Hall hearing case after case and passing their judgment. A day that began early bleeds slowly into the afternoon hours. The sun dips behind the eastern mountains, casting the hall into shadow, making it darker and cooler, and making it nearly impossible for Éomer to keep his eyes open as he decides where the butcher’s fence should rightfully be built and how many chickens are owed to the tailor in order to settle a debt. He tries not to slump back against his chair, tries to force his eyes to stay open. 

But then, from the back of the hall, the next name that is announced makes his spine stiffen and his hands curl around the carved arms of his throne. Into the wide, dark hall steps Lothíriel, followed closely by a woman he is sure he has seen somewhere before. Lothíriel has adopted the styles of Rohan, wearing a dark, elegant dress with a high collar and long sleeves that sweep the floor. Her black hair is pulled back, elaborately braided in a style like the one he recalls his sister favoring. The older woman next to her is dressed more simply, in the rougher, sturdier fabrics worn by the working women of the city below.

Éomer hears the men to either side of him shift in their seats.

The women curtsey, then straighten. Lothíriel clears her throat and looks back at her companion, who nods.

“Your grace,” Lothíriel says, turning back to them, and it takes Éomer a moment to realize that she is addressing _him_. “My lords.”

Éomer gestures for her to continue, as he has every other claimant who has appeared before him, and Lothíriel nods. He is surprised to see uncertainty in her eyes and in the way she rubs the thumb of her left hand over the back of her right. She tells them, in deferential tones, about the war widow’s home and its failing roof. She tells them about the spots of rotten thatch and how rainwater seeps through and pools on the home’s earthen floor, soaking and spoiling beds and stores of food. With winter on its way, she says, the thatching must be repaired, and the widows have no means to do it themselves. The woman behind her watches her carefully as she speaks, nodding her head every once in a while. Then, like all the others, Lothíriel bows her head and awaits judgment. 

“The king’s purse is already stretched,” Erkenbrand declares from his seat to the right of the throne, then, to Éomer, “The cost will be more than we can withstand.”

Éomer watches as Lothíriel and her companion exchange a glance, absorbing the disappointment they must feel at Erkenbrand’s words, then turn back to look at him. Behind her back, nearly out of his view, he can see Lothíriel reach and take the other woman’s hand. 

“It is a sacred duty to care for the women and children of our honored dead,” Éomer says, looking pointedly toward Erkenbrand. “We will see this job done. My men will do it themselves if need be.”

The other councillors murmur their agreement and Éomer waves a hand, dismissing them. The ladies smile, curtseying and departing with their hands still clasped together.

Later, Éomer finds Lothíriel in his solar, bent over the maps of Rohan he has spread across the room’s heavy wood table. He tempts her to his hearth with a glass of Gondorian wine sent from Elessar. After one glass, then another, she usually grows relaxed, smiling more easily and laughing at nearly any attempt at a joke he makes. But tonight, she holds her chin in her hand and stares into the fire as though waiting for it to speak to her. Finally, Éomer speaks up instead.

“That was a great kindness you did.”

She shakes her head. “It was not just that. It was…” She trails off. “She was so terrified to come before the court. I felt sorry for her, but I understood as well.”

“ _I_ do not understand it. The court is not meant to be terrifying.”

“And yet to a woman alone, of simple means, to make a request before a great king and his stone-faced councillors is no easy task.”

“That is--” he thinks, his mind racing, “That is not my intention.”

She nods, but doesn’t say anything more. Instead, she purses her lips and turns back to the fire.

“I have tried to see that they are cared for.”

“Hm?”

“The war widows,” he prompts. “At the widow’s home.”

“Yes, they have a wonderful place there,” she tells him emphatically. “But a good deed like that is not done once. It requires some maintenance, that is all.”

Éomer can tell that Lothíriel is trying to protect him from her true thoughts, from her true estimation of his kingdom and his court. He frowns, sulking for a moment, then he wonders. He thinks of all the women who have come before the king’s court - wives seeking to separate themselves from loutish husbands, mothers needing assistance to care for their children, women who have themselves been accused of crimes, women who have come to make their cases on subjects from business to wills to property disputes and roof repairs. Have they all been intimidated, on some level, even terrified? Has the Golden Hall and the wall of great, deciding men inside it not seemed like the place of justice and fairness that he imagined it to be?

“When you are queen, you will sit on the court,” he announces at last.

She looks at him with her brow furrowed. “Is that usual for a Queen of Rohan?”

“No,” he says, “but I am not so concerned with what is usual.”

“Your councillors may disagree with this decision.”

“They have never stood before the court as you have,” he looks at the hearth, watching flames lick the stone that surrounds them, and rubs at his beard. “They understand power, but only one side of it. The people deserve to have their cases judged by those with... a varied experience of the world.”

He looks back at Lothíriel, and she smiles at him. He sees pride in her eyes and he sits up straighter; her high esteem of him always makes him feel brighter and stronger.

“As you wish, my love,” she says softly, and it feels like a cool breeze on a hot night.

  
  


***

  
  


The next day, Éomer joins a handful of soldiers from the Rohirrim in reconstructing the widow’s home’s roof. Stripped of his grand tunic and robes, with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and sweat on his brow, Éomer works alongside his men as they repair the wooden framework and lay fresh straw. They work hard in the not-too-hot morning hours, joking and reminiscing as they go, and Éomer delights in the chance to revisit his old friendships.

Lothíriel and the occupants of the home watch from the ground. From his rooftop vantage point, Éomer sees how easy Lothíriel is with the other women, and how relaxed they are with her. They take her hands and smile at her and have quiet conversations he cannot hear from so far away. It has been so long since a Queen of Rohan sat in Meduseld, Éomer had nearly forgotten what she might mean to his people.

Together, he and his men make quick work of the roof, and when at last Éomer climbs down and accepts a cool drink from the widow’s home keeper, the same woman who had stood beside Lothíriel in the Golden Hall, he is filled with a sense of satisfaction; a kind of deep-rooted contentment he had been missing rises up in him and makes him feel full and complete. 

As he looks around, he cannot find Lothíriel, and when he asks Háma, his captain merely shrugs. So Éomer continues back to Meduseld alone, ready for a bath and a change of clothes. Even with his shirtsleeves rolled up, the hard work and the heat of the late morning dampened him with a fine mist of sweat and turned his hair into an unruly mess. He wipes his brow with his forearm; as he walks into his solar, he has just started to pull his shirttails from under his belt when he sees Lothíriel there, crossing the room towards him.

“You--” he starts, smiling, before the look on her face silences him. 

Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are dark and wanting. As soon as she is close enough, she clutches his shirt in her hands, pulling him to her, and in another instant he is wrapped around her, gasping and panting as her lips meet his throat, his jaw, his cheek, his mouth. He kisses her as they stumble across the King’s Solar towards the heavy door to his bedchamber. They are waylaid for a moment when her hand slides between them and she palms his erection whole. Éomer is forced to grip the back of a nearby chair, clinging onto what little control he still has as she opens his trousers and takes him in her hand before he can spare a thought for propriety. She moves her hand and his knees falter; he drops his forehead to her shoulder and lets go of a low moan.

“I want you,” she whispers. “Please.”

He closes his eyes and dares to let himself feel it for a moment: _wanted_. And then they are in his bedchamber, and his shirt is a pile on the floor, and his fingers are tangled in the laces of her dress until he is nearly ready to rip the cursed thing to pieces. He gives up and lays her on the bed, pulling up her skirts and taking himself in hand as her legs wind around his waist. And then.

Háma, who has the right of entry not just to the King’s Solar but also to the king’s bedchamber, lets out a cry of alarm as he opens the room’s door and scrambles to pull it shut again as fast as he can. Éomer barely has time to pull Lothíriel’s skirts back over her bared legs before his captain is gone again. He groans and flops over onto the bed next to her tucking his cock and his shirt back into his pants and trying to control his breathing. He turns to look at Lothíriel. 

“Now he and I are even,” she says, rolling her eyes.

Éomer laughs, thinking of her reluctance to tell him the story of how she had discovered Háma and his paramour. She pushes her skirts down over her legs but makes no move to get up. Éomer stares at the ceiling until he starts to feel his fluttering heartbeat return to normal and his cock soften.

“You liked seeing me work,” he says at last, turning his head to look at her.

“You were yourself today.”

He smiles, baffled by her, and she smiles back.

“I am always myself.”

“I mean to say,” she sits up on her elbow, “that today you were a great man and a great king.”

His smile fades. He looks away from her. “I am an _accidental_ king,” he tells her quietly. It’s the thing he knows is whispered in the halls of Meduseld, the thing that has followed him around since the dark days in Minas Tirith after Théoden’s death, the days when he had first met her. 

“No,” she tells him, leaning over to catch his attention and kissing him lightly. “Today you seemed very much _on purpose_. I saw a king today.”

“And I saw a queen,” he tells her softly, knowing she is still cagey about the idea. “ _My_ queen.”

She looks away from him sharply.

After a moment, she tells him, “I still must grow used to it.”

“Yes,” he says, reaching to smooth a few strands of hair his earlier efforts had pushed out of place. He knows that it is a responsibility she takes seriously - between her evenings with Éomer and trips to the widow’s home, she has been studying Rohirric and quizzing Háma about everything that has happened in the country in the last century. He smiles again. They had both had such different intentions for their lives. And now they are together, and his heart is full.

She leaves him to wash up, and this time, instead of feeling disappointed and alone, he is filled with a new sense of determination. The thought of Lothíriel - both the regal, just queen he imagines sitting on his king’s court and the woman he wants in his bed - has pushed him to an edge. The thought of waiting to marry her pushes him to another edge. And, he decides, it is more than he can withstand. The next day, he appeals to his council again, stopping just short of begging them to let them be married sooner. At last, they consent to holding the wedding in early spring, when the world is at its most fertile and the time for begetting an heir will be auspicious. He counts it as a major victory when two of his councillors admit that Lothíriel will be a suitable queen, and one goes so far as to confess that he has grown fond of her.

When the frost eases its grip on the farmlands and garden plots of Rohan, and the fields surrounding Edoras, which laid dormant over the long winter, once again become hives of activity, the Golden Hall is thoroughly cleaned, feasting tables are placed and set, and the hall is festooned with woven wheat garlands and the earliest flowers of the season.

Éomer spends the day of his wedding welcoming visitors to the Golden Hall - the country lords and their entourages, the party from Gondor, led by Elessar and his queen, his sister and Faramir, and, from the north, a riotous band of hobbits led by Merry Brandybuck himself. Lothíriel’s brothers represent Dol Amroth, and Éomer cringes when he sees that Imrahil himself has not come. While Arwen and Éowyn disappear into Lothíriel’s chambers, where she is confined in preparation for the moment when she will rise to the rank of queen, Éomer holds court in the Golden Hall until late in the afternoon, when Erkenbrand and Háma pull him aside to begin his own preparations.

There is a long, tradition-steeped ritual to ready him for his wedding, and he can only assume that Lothíriel is enduring something similar. He is bathed and oiled and scented and dressed and prayed over and made to walk through a cloud of grey smoke emanating from burning juniper boughs.

When at last the sun sets and he waits in his rooms to be summoned, Éomer’s tired mind calls up an old reminder: that Lothíriel will be waiting for him in his solar soon and he ought to pass by the kitchens to fetch her a handful of the ginger biscuits she likes. Then, he remembers that he will not spend his evening in the usual way - warming himself by the fire with her, snacking and joking and telling stories until the time comes to bid her goodnight and send her back to her own room. Instead, he will end the day with her as his wife, in their marriage bed. Something electric and thrilling skips down his spine and through his groin. He feels his heartbeat quicken. How good she had felt in his arms on that long-ago day in the birch-tree forest, how good he had felt inside her. For so many months, he has forced himself to be proper with her, to keep his distance to convince his councillors that she is a paragon of chastity and he the embodiment of duty. The mere thought of spending the night with her is enough to heat his blood. 

Éomer’s memories of his uncle’s wedding are vague, softened and obscured by time, but what happens next in the Golden Hall still seems familiar. To Éomer, it feels as though the stories held within the strong timbers that line the hall are seeping out like golden, sticky sap. He takes his place on the dais at the head of the room, filled with people and thick with the scent of juniper and mead, and he feels a sense of timelessness. The ghosts of the kings and queens of Rohan stand at his back, ready to accept another one of their own. He feels his uncle, his parents, Théodred, all those he has loved and lost, by his side. 

At last, he sees Lothíriel at the other end of the hall, surrounded by a cluster of ladies of the court of Rohan. He can barely make out the tall figure of Lady Hild as she gently brushes her fingers against Lothíriel’s hair, ensuring that her queen is perfect before she begins the long walk down the hall. When his bride comes into the flickering torch light, dressed in dark red silk, her clasped hands covered by a cloth embroidered with the silvery grey horse of Éomer’s standard, he is sure he has never beheld a lovelier sight.

Sacred words are spoken, a cup of amber-colored mead is shared between them, their hands are bound together with woven cloth, and they are married. With great ceremony, Erkenbrand hands Éomer the queen’s crown - a more delicate version of Éomer’s heavy, golden crown, studded with garnets and peridots - and the moment he sets it on Lothíriel’s head, the room throws aside the solemn silence in which they had watched the proceedings so far and erupts into a joyful holler.

The evening that follows is noisy and cheerful. After they feast, music fills the hall and the dancing commences. At Lothíriel’s gentle suggestion, Éomer engages Lady Hild in one of the wild, twirling dances imported from the Westfold; the gesture makes Erkenbrand smile, and Éomer feels awash in relief that the wound made by that old slight is beginning to heal. The celebration carries on into the late night hours, when the crowd in the hall finally starts to thin. The revelers return to their homes or guest chambers, ready to sleep off the effects of free-flowing mead, and, at last, it is time to join Lothíriel in their marriage bed.

Éomer hadn’t asked Háma or Erkenbrand what would happen when they were taken to bed; he had been too embarrassed of not knowing this part of the ritual himself. Now, he finds that Lothíriel is led into his bedchamber without him, accompanied by her maids. Waiting in his solar, he is asked to undress and given a fresh nightshirt, embroidered with sheaves of wheat in white silk thread. Finally, the door to his bedchamber opens and he enters. 

Lothíriel is wearing a long, linen nightgown, and for a moment Éomer laments the fact that he had not had the opportunity to undress her himself. Then, she shifts from foot to foot and he notices how the candle light behind her shines through the gauzy fabric, showing him the curve of her waist and hips, and he forces himself to look away from her before his lust-filled thoughts become too noticeable. Her hair has been released from its braids and brushed smooth. She stands on the side of the bed farthest from him, and he is led to the opposite side. The covers are pulled down and and then over them, and once they are comfortably seated, they are prayed over and sprinkled with water from a sacred spring. 

At last, the holy men of Edoras, and the stewards and maids that attended them, leave the room. Éomer and Lothíriel both sit still, waiting until they have heard the faint sound of the door to the King’s Solar close. As soon as their ears register that soft _thud_ , they turn to each other so quickly that their noses collide and they both mutter a quick apology before tearing at each other’s clothing and pushing away the carefully arranged bedsheets.

For the first time, they are unclothed before each other. Lothíriel, with her skin the color of warm caramel, her full breasts and hips, the dark thatch of hair where her legs meet. Éomer can’t help but hope that his body is as pleasing to her as hers is to him. He knows that his hands are roughened from gripping reins and swords, that his body is marked by countless scars from countless battles - he suddenly feels especially self-conscious about a nasty, ropey purple line that stretches from his right shoulder across his bicep to his elbow - and that nothing about him could be described as _beautiful_. But she doesn’t cringe away from him, and the reverence and desire in her eyes seem to match what he himself feels. Then, she reaches for him again, and he is pulled under. If he had wanted to savor this moment, he isn’t given a chance. Her mouth is hot on his; he pushes his hand between her legs and finds her wet for him already. The feel of her, slick and soft and scorching, is nearly more than he can handle. He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw, breathing hard and holding on to her. 

“ _Please_ ,” he gasps, losing control, and she lies back, practically yanking him on top of her and clinging to him with her arms and her legs. 

His cock is hard and flushed and pushes inside her easily. The helpless cry he makes as he enters her sounds foreign to his own ears. For what seems like a long while - and not long enough - he is lost to the world. His head swims; when he closes his eyes, stars bloom behind his eyelids. He clutches the bedsheets to keep from grabbing Lothíriel too roughly. He only dimly registers the frantic way Lothíriel runs her hands along his back to hold on to his hips, the way she moves her own hips to meet his thrusts. Her body tenses and then spends, her fingernails digging into his flesh, her head tilting back against the pillows as a deep moan is wrenched from her. Éomer buries his face in the pillow next to her to muffle his own shout as he empties into her. 

For a long time, he is immobilized by the sheer force of it all. Their bodies are sticky with sweat, overheated despite the cool night air, and when it finally becomes too uncomfortable he moves off of her and onto the bed next to her. He watches as she smiles and stretches, then rolls to hold on to him again. He tangles his legs with hers, and she traces the scarred lines of his chest. Éomer weaves his fingers into her hair and closes his eyes. For so many years he has lived an un-touched life - the life of a soldier, a marshal of the Riddermark - surrounded by men who looked to him to lead them and few others, a life characterized by asceticism and loneliness. The slide of her legs against his and the smooth touch of her fingers on his body is indescribable - like medicine for a sickness he could never admit to having.

“My love,” she whispers, her breath warm on his skin, and Éomer opens his eyes and moves to look at her.

“My love,” he answers, raising his hand to run a finger along her cheek. He feels lazy and loved, satisfied at last. Then, a flash of light catches his eye.

“What is this?” he asks, catching her left hand to get a closer look at the silver ring on her third finger. It’s ornately carved - Elvish work - and set with a shimmering stone. 

“The people of Dol Amroth are descended from the Elves,” Lothíriel says, and he nods. “There is a prayer in Sindarin that a mother gives to a daughter on her wedding day, along with a gift.”

“Queen Arwen?” he asks, and she smiles despite the tears in her eyes. He gathers her in his arms, feeling the wet drops smear against his bare chest. After a while, he lets a few of his own quiet tears fall. All the feelings of the day seem dredged up at once: the bitter sting of Imrahil’s absence, the overwhelming joy he had felt to become Lothíriel’s husband, the heady mix of love and loss played out over the course of the day. She hiccups and buries her face against his shoulder for a long time.

When her breathing slows again, he kisses her, and she tastes like salt. She kisses him back and slings her leg over his hips, rolling him onto his back. His cock fills again and he slides inside her. It’s slower this time - no frantic grasping and sloppy kisses. Instead they move together, and Éomer feels himself caught on a rolling, languorous wave, savoring the new details of their lovemaking: the press of her stomach against his, the way she braces herself with her hands on his shoulders, pressing him down into the mattress; the way her thighs squeeze his hips, the way her hair swings around her shoulders as she moves, the way she kisses him when she comes.

She falls asleep before he does. Éomer gets up to take a long sip of water and stoke the fire, now mostly embers. He extinguishes the room's candles before climbing back into bed and covering them both with blankets. The room is dark and quiet, with only the hazy light of the cloud-covered moon shining through the cracks in the window shutters. Despite the gloom, he can see the outline of her - his wife, his queen. In the morning they will don their regalia and walk through the city, introducing the common folk to their queen, a woman they have already met as a patron of their shops and an advocate for those unable to find their own voice.

He reaches across the sheets and finds her hand with his. She is warm and solid and real. His fingers fold around hers, but she doesn’t stir. He feels the smooth, metallic outline of the ring given to her by Arwen, and thinks of their son. His thumb circles the stone set in silver and his eyelids grow heavy.

And then, just as he feels himself sink into a promise-filled sleep, Lothíriel’s hand closes around his.

  
  



	6. Epilogue: Lothíriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a little unplanned epilogue. Cheers to Owlkin for offering up one of the ideas I used in this chapter in the comments for the last chapter :)

It is the first hot day of summer. Éomer has been in Minas Tirith for a week, attending a summit of leaders of Men, and Lothíriel has done her best to fulfill his ceremonial functions in his absence. Finally, a court day comes. She spends the morning answering correspondence - she has gained a reputation as a defender of the kingdom’s women, and receives stacks of letters from women of all walks of life, some written in Westron, some in Rohirric, some in an beautiful, flowing script, and others nearly illegible. In the afternoon, Lothíriel takes her place on her husband’s throne and Elfhelm, Marshal of the East-mark, replaces Erkenbrand, who has also gone to Minas Tirith. The other councillors take their place to either side of them. Along the west wall of the room are Hild, who quickly became her favorite lady of the court, and Gamling, who was placed in charge of her security and rarely leaves her side unless asked.

One by one, the court is presented with a barrage of cases, but nothing that Lothíriel considers remarkable. She, Elfhelm, and the council make their decisions on routine matters of business and property as the afternoon grows late and the Golden Hall grows warmer and warmer. After a while, the heat makes Lothíriel’s head swim and her stomach turn. At last, she feels overcome. She shoots Gamling a significant look coupled with a slight gesture of her hand, and he rises and crosses the hall to stop the flow of claimants for the day. As the hall empties, Gamling and Hild come to her side. Lothíriel realizes then that she must look as terrible as she feels, because Gamling offers his arm and Hild offers her handkerchief to dab at the film of sweat on Lothíriel’s brow.

“You are unwell, your grace,” Gamling says, frowning at her.

Lothíriel waves away his concern. He doesn’t know - and she has no intention of telling him - that she’s had trouble sleeping while Éomer has been gone from Edoras; in the dark of night, her mind has been preoccupied with thoughts of Éomer seeing her father in Minas Tirith and rest has been hard to come by.

“I am only tired,” she tells them.

Hild takes her arm and leads her to her bedchamber, helping Lothíriel out of her dress and leaving her to fall into a restless sleep until supper.

***

In another week, Éomer returns, and is welcomed with a feast in the Golden Hall. The room is filled with the lords and ladies of the court, a crowd that has finally accepted Lothíriel as one of their own. As she waits for her husband’s arrival, she looks out across a sea of now-friendly faces, and can’t help smiling to herself. A passing steward offers his tray to her, heavy with slices of golden cake studded with raspberries, but the sharp smell of the berries makes her stomach gurgle, and she waves him away. Next to her, Hild gives Lothíriel a strange look before taking a piece for herself.

At last, the doors to the hall are knocked open and Éomer and his traveling party stride in. In another moment, Lothíriel is in his arms, laughing and smiling up at him and chiding him for the thick beard he’s grown on the road from Minas Tirith to Edoras. He grins and gives her a prickly kiss, then turns to Hild. 

“Our queen seems just as I left her,” he says, then bows his head, “You have taken good care of her, my lady.”

“Yes, your grace,” Hild says, curtseying. When she straightens, she opens her mouth as though to say something more, but Lothíriel catches her eye and gives her a warning look. She has already told Hild not to say a word about the court day incident, and her lady’s jaw snaps shut. Lothíriel is embarrassed about it now - sure that it had been too dramatic a choice to end the court early, no matter how ill she felt. 

Then, from over her shoulder, comes Gamling, who bows to the king and, having overheard the exchange, offers his own unsolicited thoughts.

“We have done our best, your grace,” he says, wearing the same frown he had worn when he and Hild had tended to Lothíriel, “though the queen has been so unwell these past days.”

Next to her, she can feel Éomer’s body go from relaxed to rigid.

“Unwell?” Éomer asks in a small voice, and when Lothíriel turns to look at him she sees an unrecognizable fear in his eyes that makes a chill run down her back.

“I am perfectly well,” she insists, giving Gamling a withering look, “though the nights have been too hot to sleep soundly. A common complaint in Meduseld this summer, I think.”

Gamling and Hild stay silent. Éomer searches her face, looking, she knows, for any sign of weakness. Lothíriel smiles brightly. 

“Come,” she says, cutting through the awkwardness of the moment and tugging at Éomer’s hand. He follows her through the crushing crowd in the Golden Hall to the King’s Solar and then to their bedchamber beyond, where she is certain she can put his mind to rest. 

For weeks now, she has missed him in her arms and in her bed, and Lothíriel takes full advantage of his presence now. And with her mouth hot on his and her hands in his hair, Éomer seems to forget his concerns about her health. With the feast in the hall still ongoing, Lothíriel knows they must make quick work of this reunion; she pushes his shoulders until he lies back on their bed, opening his trousers as she hitches up her skirts to kneel over him. He groans loudly as she lowers her hips onto his, his eyes closing and his mouth going slack. 

Lothíriel leans to kiss him, and he catches her with a hand in her hair, holding her to him. With her tongue in his mouth and her hips rolling against his, she goads him into an athletic fuck that makes her grateful for the loud music in the hall.

After, she does what she can to repair her braids - she will have to find Hild as soon as they reenter the hall - while he catches his breath, still sprawled on their bed.

“How lucky I am to come home to you,” he says, turning his head to look at her. He gives her a wolfish grin, and he looks so good to her, flushed and relaxed, with his pants still undone and the flat plane of his stomach bared. Lothíriel licks her lips and forces herself to look away from him, lest they spend the rest of the evening hidden away in their bedchamber, ignoring their guests.

When they finally reenter the Golden Hall together, Lothíriel breathes a sigh of relief, sure that Éomer has forgotten what Gamling had revealed and that their life will carry on as usual.

  
  


***

  
  


In the morning, Éomer and Lothíriel ride to the birch-tree forest for a picnic, shadowed by Háma and Gamling, who are left at the treeline as they walk into the forest.

As it had been for Éomer in his youth, the forest has been a place of refuge for them, the location of many picnics, walks, and trysts since their wedding earlier that spring. Now, they walk to the berry patch Lothíriel remembers from their first visit here. Just as he had then, Éomer pulls a picnic from the sack he carried with him - rosy pink apples, creamy goat’s milk cheese, crispbread and a small pot of honey.

They settle in, quietly eating and watching the sunlight filter through the trees, casting the world around them in a golden-green light. Lothíriel takes a deep breath of air that smells like growing things. A breeze rustles the leaves above them, cooling as it crosses the nearby stream, providing a welcome relief as the day starts to grow warm.

Her reverie is interrupted by Éomer’s voice, softly reaching out to her.

“Your father is well,” he says. From the corner of her eye, she can see him looking at her cautiously.

Lothíriel nods and rolls the apple in her hands over.

“You spoke to him?”

“He is coming around to our side.”

“Is he?”

“He will.” 

Lothíriel frowns. The Lord of Linhir, whose son Lothíriel had abandoned when she left for Rohan nearly a year ago, had placed high tariffs on Dol Amroth’s chief exports as retaliation for the embarrassment that incident had caused him, and the costs had been steep.

“Perhaps you should visit him.”

“I cannot,” she says, looking at him incredulously.

“Why?”

“I ought to be with...my people,” she says cautiously, watching Éomer’s face closely to see if she has assumed too much by claiming Rohan as her own, but he is unfazed and she carries on. “They must know that I am here with them, not homesick for another place and ready to leave so soon.”

Éomer nods. Lothíriel passes the apple back to him, feeling too unsettled to eat it, and he hesitates before tucking it into his sack.

“Have you really been ill, as Gamling said?” he asks at last.

“I am not ill,” she insists, “only tired. Our bed is hard to sleep in without you in it.”

He smiles, but looks away from her, rubbing at his jaw, freshly shaved that morning.

“My mother was carried away by an illness,” he says, pursing his lips and swallowing hard.

“I am not ill,” she says again, wishing that he would look back at her. “I will not be carried away from you.”

“Will you see a doctor?” 

“I am not--”

“Will you?”

He looks back at her, and the expression on his face shocks her into silence. She has never seen him so serious and so fearful.

“If it will set your mind at ease,” she manages, and he nods, his shoulders loosening slightly.

He helps her to her feet, and they make their way back to their horses. They have only gone a little way when Lothíriel feels a wave of the same thing that struck her on that day at the King’s Court - a mix of nausea and exhaustion that makes her feet feel leaden and her stomach roil. She stumbles over a clump of tree roots and Éomer grabs her elbow to steady her. The alarmed look he gives her when he sees her face is telling. She knows what she must look like to him - pale and clammy and sick. She won’t let him carry her, so he leads her gingerly to the horses with his hand securely around her waist. She is too disoriented to object when he lifts her onto Firefoot and slides into the saddle behind her; Gamling leads her riderless horse back to Edoras as Éomer flies far ahead of their escort, rushing into the city as fast as Firefoot can gallop.

Lothíriel is put back in the king’s bedchamber - she had heard whispered suggestions that she be given her own room in case her illness is contagious or prolonged, but she and Éomer have not been separated at Meduseld since they were married and Éomer insists that she stay in the king’s bedchamber, even if he must be displaced as a result. Hild waits with her in the bedchamber while the doctor is summoned. From the King's Solar, Lothíriel can hear faint voices as Éomer quizzes Gamling on everything that happened in his absence. 

As the chaos of returning her to Edoras dies down, Lothíriel finds that she once again feels like herself, and once again feels the sting of embarrassment that she has caused such a disruption for a feeling that has now passed and has surely only been caused by her own sleeplessness or simple indigestion. She tries to insist to Hild that she is no longer out of sorts, but Hild has no more power to stop what has already been put in motion than her queen does. 

“You need not fear the doctor coming, your grace,” Hild says with a sympathetic smile. “He will be the bearer of good news, and the king will be at ease again.”

From her place on edge of the bed, Lothíriel scoffs. “How can you know that? If he finds that nothing is wrong with me, Éomer will still worry. And if he  _ should _ find something wrong--”

Hild laughs. “There is nothing wrong with you, my lady.”

Lothíriel sulks, bristling at the feeling of being laughed at.

“I was the oldest of seven children, and cousin to many more,” Hild tells her as she putters around the room pouring and then handing Lothíriel a cup of cool water. “Your grace, you are with child. I feel sure of it. I saw my mother and my aunts carry many children and as sure as I stand before you, a prince of Rohan swims in your belly.”

Lothíriel had no younger siblings, and only older cousins living in Minas Tirith, which seemed like a thousand miles away from Dol Amroth until the war had come, and then the two cities had seemed far  _ too _ close. She hadn’t watched her mother bear other children, or her aunts, who had been married to far away princes and lords. She frowns and sips her water, deep in thought.

“You really think so?” she asks at last, her heart starting to pound in her chest. 

Hild smiles. “If it weren’t so unbecoming to make a bet, I would wager the king has presented many opportunities for such a thing to happen, and so it has.” 

Lothíriel blushes and looks away. Hild tells her that she will visit the kitchens to begin to procure the things Lothíriel will need now - candied ginger to keep her stomach settled, more pillows to keep her changing body comfortable, dresses with loose fronts and a rich balm to rub on the skin of her belly to help it stretch. She gives Lothíriel a glowing, approving smile before she leaves, and Lothíriel tries to smile back.

A half-hour later, Hild’s suspicion is officially confirmed. After suffering a battery of questions and pokes and prods at her stomach, still the same shape and size it’s always been, the doctor opens the door to the king’s bedchamber to allow Éomer’s reentry and announces that Lothíriel is with child. Lothíriel sits at the edge of the tall bed, her feet only grazing the floor, feeling like a child herself as the two men discuss her condition.  _ At least,  _ she thinks _ , I first heard this news from a friend, instead of in this cold way _ .

As soon as they are left alone again, Éomer takes her entirely by surprise, kneeling on the floor at her feet and taking her hands in his. He lowers his forehead to the tops of her thighs. Lothíriel can see his jaw moving and can barely hear his whispered words in Rohirric. She runs a hand over his long hair, letting him pray to whichever god he chooses for the protection of her and the child.

When he looks up at her again, his cheeks are damp with tears; he sits next to her on the bed, letting go of her hands to touch her face. His eyes shine with love; he leans to kiss her, barely brushing her lips with his. He’s reverent and gentle and all Lothíriel can feel is prickly and irritated by it. She takes a breath to calm herself.

“When will it be announced?” she asks.

Éomer smiles. “It will be well known by the time we leave this room.”

Lothíriel feels a hot lick of frustration creep up her spine and she closes her eyes against it. She feels suddenly out of control; her body is occupied, not just by the child itself but by an idea that will signify something different to all who encounter it. She can see it in the way that Hild and the doctor and even Éomer himself handle her more delicately and look at her with quiet curiosity and admiration. In the long months that lie ahead, she will be  _ handled  _ and  _ managed _ in a way she already knows she resents, and she feels suddenly wild and desperate to reclaim the power over herself she feels slipping away.

When Éomer leans in to kiss her again, she surges against him, pressing her mouth against his and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. She can feel his hesitation, and she hates it. He huffs a breath against her cheek as her tongue slides into his mouth. Her hand lowers to his lap, unlacing the front of his pants before he can stop her; in an instant he is hard and hot, velvet-soft skin pressing against her moving hand. But then his hand closes around her wrist, stilling her, and he pulls away from her slightly, panting to catch his breath.

“I’m not sure…” he starts and stops. “I do not know what is allowed.”

“I need you now,” she says, looking at him seriously, wanting to assure him that she is a woman who needs him to touch her and hold her and fuck her as much as she is the mother of his child, needing him to know that she is the same woman who has been in his arms and in his bed, despite this monumental change. “ _ Please _ .”

Éomer takes a deep, shaky breath, then kisses her as she remembers - bold and obscene. After so many months married he can undress her nearly as quickly as Hild can and he makes quick work of her gown, then adds his own shirt and pants to growing pile of fabric on the floor. His hands on her body are as she remembers, too - rough with wanting as he grabs her hips, heavy and strong as he pulls her to him, and then slow and steady as he takes his cock in hand and pushes inside her. Lothíriel bucks against him, and he cries out in pleasure. One of his hands slides between them, strumming at her most sensitive spot as he finds a driving rhythm. Lothíriel feels herself set on fire; every inch of him feels different against her and inside her now, pressed and moving against newly-tender skin. He coaxes her into a shattering orgasm that leaves her feeling limp and spent, clutching his shoulders to stop the room from spinning as he comes, too.

After, Éomer helps her back into her dress - another task he has learned since their wedding - and dresses himself. Feeling dazed and satisfied and, most importantly, like herself again, Lothíriel steps into the King’s Solar. She finds a tray of candied ginger left on the table there and pops a piece into her mouth.

  
  


***

  
  


The summer is just starting to cool into autumn when Lothíriel finds herself standing on the dais in the Golden Hall alongside Éomer, waiting for the party from Dol Amroth to arrive. The great fire in the center of the hall feels far away, and she tugs at her sleeves to try to find some extra warmth. Next to her, Éomer notices and moves to put an arm around her. But then, the doors to the hall open, and Éomer’s arm snaps back to his side. She knows he’s been nervous about this meeting; she’s tried to keep her own anxieties about this day to herself. Now, she can see a fine sheen of sweat on his brow; he pulls at his collar.

Into the hall walk her father, Prince Imrahil, and her brother Amrothos. As they walk closer, Amrothos smiles at the sight of her, and she smiles back. Her father’s face is a study in neutrality; he seems to keep his unflinching, unreadable gaze fixed on Éomer. Finally, after he approaches and Éomer steps forward to greet him, their hands clasping in a stern, forceful, masculine gesture, Lothíriel’s father looks at her. She holds her breath as his eyes lower to her rounded stomach and he moves closer. 

“Your grace,” Imrahil nods his head and then holds his hands out to her; Lothíriel lets out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Taking his hands, she steps forward and closes her eyes as he kisses her cheeks. When Lothíriel looks at him again, he smiles. 

“I often forget how like your mother you are,” Imrahil says, and Lothíriel has to stop her jaw from dropping. She could count on one hand the number of times she has heard her father speak of her mother. His grief at her death had been all consuming, and then hidden behind an icy wall that neither Lothíriel nor her brothers could penetrate. Behind him, Amorothos stares, shocked. Imrahil continues with his eyes lowered, “She was very headstrong, but very wise. And a wonderful mother.” Then, he looks at her, and in his eyes Lothíriel sees both his heartbreak and his yearning for reconciliation. He speaks his next words slowly and carefully. “I know she would have been proud to see you take your place here. As proud as I am.”

And then he lets go of her, turns to Éomer, and he is a bright and cheerful Prince of Dol Amroth again, ready to negotiate a new trade deal over a flagon of mead. Éomer gestures for Imrahil to continue on to the King’s Solar, where they will begin discussing Dol Amroth’s trade with Rohan - a vital piece of business in light of the catastrophe with Linhir. Behind them, Amrothos offers his arm to Lothíriel and they exchange an incredulous look, the only people in the room who could know what a tremendous event has occurred. 

“His second grandchild may be the King of Rohan,” Amrothos tells her, bending to whisper in her ear. “I have never seen him so excited.”

  
  


***

  
  
  


It takes three weeks to outline the trade deal that Éomer and Imrahil hope will bolster both countries’ economies. During the days, Lothíriel’s husband, father, and brother stay hidden away with the King’s Council. She stays in her Queen’s Solar, a room that had gone unused in Meduseld for decades before being dusted off and rearranged for Lothíriel’s use.

She goes through her ever-growing pile of correspondence, working with Gamling and Hild to send assistance to a destitute mother in Aldburg and funding for a group of women hoping to found a home for the orphans of the Eastfold. A letter from Arwen arrives; the Queen of Gondor sends the Queen of Rohan a glowing  _ I-told-you-so _ and a promise to bring her son, Eldarion, to Edoras as soon as the next summer.

At the end of the third week, Amrothos finds her alone in her solar, calculating the cost of sending a wagon-load of grain to a settlement in the Folde. Amrothos sits by her hearth with her and tells her that he’s grown close to Hild over the course of their visit. Lothíriel doesn’t have the energy to seem surprised. She’s seen how he takes the place next to her at every feast, spending the evening that follows dancing with her and lingering by her side. She’s seen the starry-eyed way Hild looks at him, and has noticed how Hild seems to ready her queen for bed as quickly as she can so that she can rush from the room, Lothíriel assumes, to find Amrothos in some dark corridor.

It’s soon apparent where Amrothos intends to lead the conversation, and it makes Lothíriel’s heart sink. As much as she wishes for her brother’s happiness, Lothíriel can only think of how lonesome for friendship she will be with Hild gone.

“I like her very much,” she says, giving Amrothos a dark look.

Amrothos smiles brightly, “Then we have something in common.”

“I will be angry with you if you steal her away from me.”

“You will forgive me when you see the charming nieces and nephews we shall give you.”

“A quality they will have to inherit from their mother.”

“Lady Hild disagrees.”

“You did not cut off Lady Hild’s braid when she was ten,” Lothíriel sniffs. “She must be forgiven for not knowing your true nature.”

“What a long memory you have.”

“Hm,” she frowns at him.

“I don’t suppose you shall share your many memories of my brotherly misdeeds with Lady Hild.”

He looks at her askance and Lothíriel rolls her eyes.

“No, she shall have to discover your faults on her own.”

Amrothos chuckles. “You like the match, then?”

“Yes,” Lothíriel sighs and manages a half-smile. “You must treat her well, though. If I ever hear otherwise…”

“You will not,” he says quickly.

At that moment, Hild enters, brightening at the sight of Amrothos, then looking cautiously at Lothíriel. Amrothos moves to help Lothíriel up, but she waves him away, leaning on the arm of her chair to launch her heavy body up to standing. She crosses the room to embrace Hild, and she feels the woman relax against her. When Lothíriel leans back to look at her, the caution in Hild’s eyes has been replaced by hope.

“My dear sister,” Lothíriel says, and Hild’s beaming smile could light the room. 

  
  


***

  
  


Hild agrees to stay until the baby is born, a fact for which Lothíriel is endlessly grateful. That winter, it is Hild who holds her hand through the worst of the pain of childbirth, while Éomer waits with his councillors in the Golden Hall. It is Hild who seems to know just what to say to give Lothíriel permission to cry out loud as she struggles through the searing hurt, who keeps her from falling into panic when it seems the baby will never come, and gives her the strength to finally push the new life from her body. It is Hild who looks at the newborn child’s slate-grey eyes and tells Lothíriel that in time they will be a deep brown, like hers. 

When at last her body and the bedsheets are cleaned and her son is swaddled in a warm blanket and nestled in her arms, Éomer is led into their bedchamber. He sits on the bed next to her and looks at them both with wide eyes. Lothíriel passes the tiny bundle to him; he holds his son gingerly, running his fingers across the fine dusting of blond hair on the baby’s head.

“Elfwine,” he says softly, “For the lady who foresaw his birth, and whose prophecy provided the encouragement we needed when hope was nearly lost.”

Lothíriel smiles in agreement, leaning her head back on the pillow as she watches them. A wave of exhaustion floods her, replacing the adrenaline that had coursed through her veins over the past hours. She pats the bed next to her weakly, and Éomer shifts to sit, his back against the headboard and his legs stretched parallel to hers.

“He will be a great king,” Éomer says, still looking at Elfwine’s tiny, sleeping face.

“Hm,” Lothíriel hums, “He will be a great man. He will learn from you.”

Éomer looks up at her then; the expression on his face is bright and strange, and he almost looks unfamiliar, a reflection of the newness of the situation played out across his handsome features. And at the same time, there is something she recognizes there, because she feels it herself - the quiet determination behind a fresh start, a resolution to be made better by this moment.

“I will do my best.”

Elfwine stirs, woken by the deepness of his father’s voice, and his eyes blink open.

Éomer watches him, and then looks at Lothíriel with a broad grin on his face. “Your eyes!” he declares, and she smiles. Lothíriel has not seen whatever resemblance Éomer and Hild have already found but she won’t object to it. “You will teach him as much as I will,” he says absently, his finger pulling gently at the blanket until Elfwine’s hand is freed and his little fingers wrap around his father’s. “There is a kind of courage that can be found on a battlefield - it makes your blood hot and keeps you alive when you are faced with fearsome enemies. That comes from without, spurred by circumstance. There is a deeper courage that comes from within - that,  _ you _ are an expert in.”

Elfwine coos and wriggles, and the distraction he provides gives Lothíriel the moment she needs to compose herself. The birth has already left her filled with a heady brew of emotions, and Éomer’s words have made a thick lump grow in her throat. Éomer looks up at her, and he must see the tears in her eyes because concern flickers across his face. She smiles and reaches for him, her fingers holding onto the fabric of his shirt before he can re-adjust Elfwine and free a hand to take hers.

“My love,” he tells her, squeezing her hand lightly.

Lothíriel squeezes his hand back, then shifts her shoulders slightly and yawns, her pillow feeling so soft and her eyelids feeling so heavy. 

“My love,” she whispers, and takes a last look at her little family before letting herself drift to sleep.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I think that’s it. Will Elfwine and Eldarion (and cousin Elboron) be bestest friends and have a million adventures together? Yes. Will Elfwine get his own bittersweet and beautiful romance with one of Eldarion’s sisters? Yes. Will I write that story? No. I still can’t believe I finished this one. But I hope you all enjoyed this little bonus epilogue I didn’t know I was going to write, and I hope it ended in a way that allows you all to imagine how the story continues. I’m so grateful to all of you who read and left kudos and comments - this has been a rough time, and writing this story and seeing what you all think of it has been a bright spot.


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